Department of Clinical Laboratory, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2017 Aug 31;7(1):10108. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-10476-x.
When we are exposed to a novel stimulus sequence, we can learn the sequence by extracting a statistical structure that is potentially embedded in the sequence. This mechanism is called statistical learning, and is considered a fundamental and domain-general process that is innate in humans. In the real-world environment, humans are inevitably exposed to auditory sequences that often overlap with one another, such as speech sound streams from multiple speakers or entangled melody lines generated by multiple instruments. The present study investigated how single and dual attention modulates brain activity, reflecting statistical learning when two auditory sequences were presented simultaneously. The results demonstrated that the effect of statistical learning had more pronounced neural activity when listeners paid attention to only one sequence and ignored the other, rather than paying attention to both sequences. Biased attention may thus be an essential strategy when learners are exposed to multiple information streams.
当我们接触到新的刺激序列时，我们可以通过提取潜在嵌入在序列中的统计结构来学习序列。这种机制称为统计学习，被认为是一种基本的、普遍适用的、人类天生的过程。在现实环境中，人类不可避免地会接触到经常重叠的听觉序列，例如来自多个说话者的语音流或由多个乐器产生的交织旋律线。本研究调查了单注意和双注意如何调节大脑活动，反映了当同时呈现两个听觉序列时的统计学习。结果表明，当听众只关注一个序列而忽略另一个序列，而不是同时关注两个序列时，统计学习的效果会产生更明显的神经活动。因此，当学习者接触到多个信息流时，偏向注意可能是一种必要的策略。
