Cognitive control in the cocktail party: Preparing selective attention to dichotically presented voices supports distractor suppression

Nolden, Sophie; Ibrahim, Camellia N.; Koch, Iring · 2019 · Crossref

DOI: 10.3758/s13414-018-1620-x

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Summary

This study investigates the preparatory mechanisms of auditory selective attention, specifically examining how advance preparation influences the suppression of distractors versus the enhancement of targets. The research addresses a gap in understanding whether increased preparation time in auditory tasks benefits target processing, distractor suppression, or both, contrasting with visual task-switching literature where preparation typically reduces switch costs. The authors utilized a dichotic-listening paradigm where participants classified spoken number words presented simultaneously to both ears, one by a male and one by a female speaker. A visual cue indicated which gender to attend to, allowing for the manipulation of attention switches and repetitions. The experimental design involved two experiments manipulating the cue-target interval (CTI) at 400 ms or 1,200 ms to vary preparation time. Crucially, the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the target and distractor was varied: in Experiment 1, SOA levels were -200 ms (distractor first), 0 ms (simultaneous), and 200 ms (target first); Experiment 2 simplified this to -200 ms and 200 ms. Participants performed a classification task (judging if the target number was smaller or greater than 5) while ignoring the distractor. Congruency effects, where target and distractor mapped to the same or different responses, were also measured to assess involuntary attention capture. The results demonstrated robust attention switch costs, with slower response times in switch trials compared to repetition trials. Notably, these switch costs were not significantly reduced by the prolonged CTI, suggesting that active preparation does not facilitate the shifting of auditory attention itself. However, a substantial general preparation benefit was observed, with faster overall response times in the long CTI condition. The critical finding emerged from the interaction between CTI and SOA: the preparation benefit was significantly greater when the distractor was presented before the target (SOA -200 ms) than when the target was presented first. This pattern held across both experiments and in both switch and repetition trials. Additionally, congruency effects in error rates were smallest when the target preceded the distractor, indicating that a head start in target processing reduces distractor interference, but this effect was independent of preparation time. The significance of these findings lies in the conclusion that increased preparation time in auditory selective attention primarily supports distractor suppression rather than target enhancement. Unlike in visual tasks, where preparation aids in setting up the target set, auditory preparation appears to be more effective at attenuating the influence of irrelevant stimuli. This suggests that the cognitive control mechanisms for auditory attention are distinct, with preparation facilitating the filtering of distractors rather than the active shifting or enhancement of the attended stream. This distinction clarifies the modality-specific nature of attentional control and highlights the importance of distractor suppression in auditory environments.

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Topics

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• attention selective divided
• auditory
• task switching