Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC), University of Trento, Trento, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2019 Feb 27;9(1):2854. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-39166-6.
In vision, objects have been described as the 'units' on which non-spatial attention operates in many natural settings. Here, we test the idea of object-based attention in the auditory domain within ecologically valid auditory scenes, composed of two spatially and temporally overlapping sound streams (speech signal vs. environmental soundscapes in Experiment 1 and two speech signals in Experiment 2). Top-down attention was directed to one or the other auditory stream by a non-spatial cue. To test for high-level, object-based attention effects we introduce an auditory repetition detection task in which participants have to detect brief repetitions of auditory objects, ruling out any possible confounds with spatial or feature-based attention. The participants' responses were significantly faster and more accurate in the valid cue condition compared to the invalid cue condition, indicating a robust cue-validity effect of high-level, object-based auditory attention.
在视觉中，物体被描述为非空间注意在许多自然环境中运作的“单位”。在这里，我们在由两个空间和时间上重叠的声音流（实验 1 中的语音信号与环境音景和实验 2 中的两个语音信号）组成的生态有效听觉场景中，在听觉领域测试基于对象的注意的想法。通过非空间线索将自上而下的注意力引导到一个或另一个听觉流。为了测试基于对象的高级注意效应，我们引入了一个听觉重复检测任务，其中参与者必须检测听觉对象的短暂重复，从而排除与空间或基于特征的注意的任何可能混淆。与无效线索条件相比，参与者在有效线索条件下的反应明显更快且更准确，表明基于对象的高级听觉注意具有强大的线索有效性效应。
