Robin D A, Rizzo M
Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, University of Iowa, Iowa City.
J Speech Hear Res. 1992 Jun;35(3):701-7. doi: 10.1044/jshr.3503.701.
This study examined 30 young and 10 elderly subjects to test whether orienting of attention could be measured in audition. Orienting in a mixed-modal condition in which stimuli were either auditory or visual was also tested. The dependent measure was the reaction time (RT) to lateralized targets when the locations were predicted by antecedent arrow cues that were correct (valid), were incorrect (invalid), or provided no lateralizing information (neutral). A comparison between the two groups among the different conditions showed that elderly subjects had longer RTs than the younger participants, but the pattern of results was similar in both groups. In addition, a similar RT pattern was found for each modal condition: Valid trials elicited the fastest responses and invalid trials the slowest. These findings suggest that the mechanisms involved in orienting attention operate in audition and that individuals may allocate their processing resources among multiple sensory pools. Moreover, effects seen in orienting attention in audition were similar to those found in vision and are interpretable with the same types of models. Orienting attention appears to be relatively resistant to the aging process in the sample of subjects tested in this study.
本研究对30名年轻受试者和10名老年受试者进行了测试，以检验是否能够在听觉中测量注意力定向。还测试了在刺激为听觉或视觉的混合模式条件下的定向。因变量是当位置由先前的箭头线索预测时，对侧向目标的反应时间（RT），这些线索是正确的（有效）、错误的（无效）或不提供侧向信息（中性）。不同条件下两组之间的比较表明，老年受试者的反应时间比年轻参与者长，但两组的结果模式相似。此外，在每种模式条件下都发现了类似的反应时间模式：有效试验引发的反应最快，无效试验引发的反应最慢。这些发现表明，注意力定向所涉及的机制在听觉中起作用，并且个体可能在多个感觉库之间分配其处理资源。此外，在听觉中定向注意力时观察到的效应与在视觉中发现的效应相似，并且可以用相同类型的模型来解释。在本研究测试的受试者样本中，注意力定向似乎相对不受衰老过程的影响。
