Preparatory Switches of Auditory Spatial and Non-Spatial Attention Among Simultaneous Voices

Lavric, Aureliu; Schmied, Elisa · 2025 · OpenAlex-citations

DOI: 10.5334/joc.412

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Summary

This study investigates whether listeners can preparatively shift auditory attention between simultaneous voices based on spatial location, addressing the "cocktail party problem." While previous research established that advance preparation reduces the performance cost of switching attention between voices cued by gender (non-spatial attributes), it remained unclear if similar preparatory benefits apply to spatial cues (left vs. right ear). The authors aimed to determine if the "reduction in switch cost" (RISC) effect, indicative of top-down task-set reconfiguration, extends to spatial selection and whether this effect is influenced by trial-to-trial bindings between spatial and non-spatial voice features. Additionally, the study compared the efficacy of verbal versus pictorial visual cues for directing attention. The researchers conducted two experimental sessions with 36 participants. In the "ear session," participants listened to dichotic presentations of simultaneous male and female voices and were cued to attend to either the left or right ear. In the "gender session," voices were presented diotically, and participants were cued to attend to either the male or female voice. On each trial, a visual cue (either a word or a picture) indicated the target dimension 50, 800, or 1400 milliseconds before the voices began speaking. Participants classified the number spoken by the target voice as odd or even. The design controlled for passive attentional inertia by keeping the response-stimulus interval constant while varying the cue-stimulus interval. The study also manipulated the consistency of gender-ear mappings across trials to examine feature binding effects. The results demonstrated that advance preparation significantly reduced the switch cost in both spatial (ear-cued) and non-spatial (gender-cued) conditions. This confirms that listeners can effectively pre-configure their auditory attention for a change in voice location, supporting the applicability of the advance task-set reconfiguration account to spatial selection. Performance was superior when the voice heard on a given side remained consistent with the preceding trial, indicating an episodic binding between spatial and non-spatial voice features. However, this binding did not materially alter the magnitude of the preparation benefit. Furthermore, pictorial cues yielded better overall performance than verbal cues, particularly at short cue-stimulus intervals. The authors attribute this advantage to interference from phonological processing required for word recognition, which competes with the concurrent encoding of the target speech. These findings are significant for understanding cognitive control in auditory perception. They refute the notion that preparatory attentional shifts are limited to non-spatial voice attributes, showing that spatial selection can also be proactively controlled. The study clarifies that while feature bindings between spatial and non-spatial dimensions influence baseline performance, they do not hinder the ability to prepare for attentional switches. Additionally, the superiority of pictorial cues suggests that minimizing linguistic interference during cue processing enhances auditory selection efficiency. This work refines theoretical models of the cocktail party effect by integrating spatial selection into frameworks of top-down attentional control.

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• auditory