Orienting attention to sound object representations attenuates change deafness.

Abstract

According to the object-based account of attention, multiple objects coexist in short-term memory (STM), and we can selectively attend to a particular object of interest. Although there is evidence that attention can be directed to visual object representations, the assumption that attention can be oriented to sound object representations has yet to be validated. Here, we used a delayed match-to-sample task to examine whether orienting attention to sound object representations influences change detection within auditory scenes consisting of 3 concurrent sounds, each occurring at a different location. On some trials, the 2 scenes were identical; in the remaining trials, the locations of 2 sounds were switched. In a control experiment, we first identified auditory scenes, in which the 3 sounds were unambiguously segregated, for the subsequent experiments. In 2 experiments, we showed that orienting attention to a sound object representation during memory retention (via a retro-cue) enhanced performance relative to uncued trials, up to 4 s of memory retention. Our study shows that complex auditory scenes composed of cooccurring sound sources are quickly parsed into sound object representations--which are then available for top-down selective attention. Here, we demonstrate that attention can be guided toward 1 of those representations, thereby attenuating change deafness. Furthermore, the effects of retro-cues in audition extend analogous findings in the visual domain, thereby suggesting that orienting attention to an object within visual or auditory STM may follow similar processing principles.

Segregating the Neural Correlates of Physical and Perceived Change in Auditory Input using the Change Deafness Effect

“…Remarkably, previous studies on visual change detection have demonstrated that even pronounced changes within a complex visual scene can remain unnoticed if they occur after a short interruption of the visual presentation (Simons & Rensink, 2005;Rensink, 2002). Recently, several psychophysical experiments provided evidence for the existence of a similar effect in the auditory modality (Backer & Alain, 2012;Fenn et al, 2011;Vitevitch & Donoso, 2011;Gregg & Samuel, 2008Eramudugolla, McAnally, Martin, Irvine, & Mattingley, 2008;Pavani & Turatto, 2008;Eramudugolla, Irvine, McAnally, Martin, & Mattingley, 2005;Vitevitch, 2003). In a similar manner to visual change blindness, this change deafness emerges when listeners have to monitor demanding auditory scenes consisting of several streams (Gregg & Samuel, 2008Eramudugolla et al, 2005Eramudugolla et al, , 2008Pavani & Turatto, 2008) or when concentrating on a specific aspect of the auditory input (Fenn et al, 2011;Vitevitch, 2003).…”

A roadmap for the study of conscious audition and its neural basis

“…For example, although the ARN is elicited by individual tones, both it and listeners' perception of the individual tones generating it may be greatly enhanced when the tones group as a stream and segregate from the random cloud in which they are embedded [111] (see also [109]). Thus, while the result from [111] that only the second of a two-tone figure elicited an ARN suggests that it may not reflect perceptual awareness of individual target tones, it leaves open the possibility that it reflects a phenomenological representation of the figure (similar to ideas from reverse hierarchy theory [11]) such that perception of the stream improves subsequent perception of its individual elements [150], perhaps even gating to awareness prior target tones that were initially subconscious [151,152].…”

In search of the focus of attention in working memory: 13 years of the retro-cue effect

“…However, there are reports of retro-cue effects with more complex visual stimuli, such as alphanumeric or horoscope symbols (Sligte, Scholte, & Lamme, 2008), shape-color conjunctions (Delvenne, Cleeremans, & Laloyaux, 2010;Gilchrist, Duarte, & Verhaeghen, 2016;Li & Saiki, 2015), colored line-drawing of objects (Astle, Nobre, & Scerif, 2012;Sligte, Vandenbroucke, Scholte, & Lamme, 2010), object drawings with 3-D details (Beck & van Lamsweerde, 2011), real-world pictures of objects (LaRocque et al, 2015), visual illusions (Vandenbroucke, Sligte, Fahrenfort, Ambroziak, & Lamme, 2012), and pictures of faces or scenes (Lepsien & Nobre, 2007;Lepsien, Thornton, & Nobre, 2011). There is evidence that retro-cues modulate access to auditory (Backer & Alain, 2012;Backer, Binns, & Alain, 2015), tactile (Katus, Andersen, & Müller, 2012a, and verbal stimuli in WM (Oberauer, 2001(Oberauer, , 2002(Oberauer, , 2003(Oberauer, , 2005. However, given the more prominent role of retro-cues in the visual domain, we will limit this review to studies using visual stimuli.…”