Department of Psychology, University of the Balearic Islands.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2013 Sep;39(5):1635-41. doi: 10.1037/a0032421. Epub 2013 Apr 8.
It is well established that a task-irrelevant sound (deviant sound) departing from an otherwise repetitive sequence of sounds (standard sounds) elicits an involuntary capture of attention and orienting response toward the deviant stimulus, resulting in the lengthening of response times in an ongoing task. Some have argued that this type of distraction can be reduced by cognitive control when visual stimuli cue the presentation of the deviant and standard sounds. We compared this account with an alternative explanation, namely, that cues may reduce distraction because cue processing depletes attentional resources from the orienting response to the deviant sound. We report the results of an experiment in which participants judged the movement direction of sounds in the absence of cues and in conditions in which the type of sound was cued early or immediately before the sounds. We found that cues predicting the presentation of deviant sounds eliminated behavioral distraction irrespective of the time available to process them. This finding lends support to the contention that distraction by deviant sounds can be reduced through cognitive control and rule out the division of attention as an alternative explanation of our results and those from past studies.
已经证实，与标准声音（重复出现的声音）相比，无关声音（偏差声音）的出现会引起注意力的非自愿捕捉和朝向偏差刺激的定向反应，从而延长正在进行的任务的反应时间。有人认为，当视觉刺激提示呈现偏差和标准声音时，认知控制可以减少这种干扰。我们将这种解释与另一种解释进行了比较，即提示可能会减少干扰，因为提示处理会从对偏差声音的定向反应中消耗注意力资源。我们报告了一项实验的结果，该实验要求参与者在没有提示的情况下判断声音的运动方向，以及在提示类型提前或在声音出现之前立即出现的情况下判断声音的运动方向。我们发现，预测偏差声音出现的提示消除了行为干扰，而与处理它们的时间无关。这一发现支持了这样一种观点，即通过认知控制可以减少偏差声音引起的干扰，并排除了注意力分散作为我们的结果和过去研究结果的另一种解释。
