Marois Alexandre, Marsh John E, Vachon François
Université Laval, Québec, Canada.
University of Gävle, Gävle, Sweden; University of Central Lancashire, Preston, United Kingdom.
Biol Psychol. 2019 Feb;141:64-74. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2019.01.002. Epub 2019 Jan 8.
The mere presence of task-irrelevant auditory stimuli is known to interfere with cognitive functioning. Disruption can be caused by changing auditory distractors (the changing-state effect) or by a sound that deviates from the auditory background (the deviation effect). The unitary account of auditory distraction explains both phenomena in terms of attentional capture whereas the duplex-mechanism account posits that they reflect two fundamentally different forms of distraction in which only the deviation effect is caused by attentional capture. To test these predictions, we exploited a physiological index of attention orienting: the pupillary dilation response (PDR). Participants performed visual serial recall while ignoring sequences of spoken letters. These sequences either comprised repeated or changing letters, and one letter could sometimes be replaced by pink noise (the deviant). Recall was poorer in both changing-state and deviant trials. Interestingly, the PDR was elicited by deviant sounds but not changing-state sounds, while a tonic increase in pupil size was found throughout changing-state trials. This physiological dissociation of the changing-state and the deviation effects suggests they are subtended by distinct mechanisms thereby procuring support for the duplex-mechanism account over the unitary account.
众所周知，与任务无关的听觉刺激的存在会干扰认知功能。干扰可能由不断变化的听觉干扰因素（变化状态效应）或与听觉背景不同的声音（偏差效应）引起。听觉分心的单一解释从注意力捕获的角度解释了这两种现象，而双重机制解释则认为它们反映了两种根本不同的分心形式，其中只有偏差效应是由注意力捕获引起的。为了验证这些预测，我们利用了注意力定向的一个生理指标：瞳孔扩张反应（PDR）。参与者在忽略语音字母序列的同时进行视觉序列回忆。这些序列要么包含重复的字母，要么包含变化的字母，有时一个字母会被粉红噪声（偏差项）取代。在变化状态试验和偏差试验中，回忆效果都较差。有趣的是，偏差声音会引发瞳孔扩张反应，而变化状态声音则不会，同时在整个变化状态试验中发现瞳孔大小持续增加。变化状态效应和偏差效应在生理上的这种分离表明，它们由不同的机制支撑，从而为双重机制解释优于单一解释提供了支持。
