Missing a Trick: Auditory Load Modulates Conscious Awareness in Audition
DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000204
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
Summary
Tests Lavie's Load Theory of Attention and Cognitive Control in the auditory modality using a novel auditory search task. Listeners heard arrays of simultaneous, spatially separated sounds and reported which of two targets was present (primary task) and whether a critical stimulus was present (secondary task). Increasing primary-task auditory load (more sounds in the array) systematically reduced detection of the critical stimulus, demonstrating that load theory extends to audition: conscious perception of background sounds depends on perceptual load in the primary auditory task.
Key finding
Higher auditory perceptual load reduces awareness of concurrent task-irrelevant sounds, providing within-modality evidence that Load Theory generalizes from vision to audition.
Methodology
Behavioral experiment with a novel auditory search task. Spatially distributed simultaneous sounds were presented; auditory load was manipulated by varying array size in the primary 2-target detection task while listeners also reported presence/absence of a concurrent critical stimulus (inattentional-deafness measure).
Quality score: 5 / 5