Nagaraj Naveen K, Magimairaj Beula M, Schwartz Sarah
Cognitive Hearing Science Lab, Communicative Disorders and Deaf Education, Utah State University, 2600 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT, 84322, USA.
Psychology, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2020 Oct;82(7):3581-3593. doi: 10.3758/s13414-020-02056-5.
We examined susceptibility to auditory distraction and its association to working-memory capacity (WMC) in children (N=125) using a dichotic listening task. Performance in a dichotic listening task was measured with and without distracting multi-talker babble (MTB). Intrusion errors from the to-be-ignored ear and the overall errors of any type between the two conditions were modeled to explain the role of WMC and the potential moderating effect of MTB, while controlling for age. Susceptibility to auditory distraction when represented by the absolute difference in errors between MTB and no-MTB conditions was not associated with WMC and age. That is, children with greater WMC were no better at ignoring interference from babble than children with low WMC. This suggests that irrelevant sounds have obligatory access to verbal short-term memory and are not effectively suppressed by the attention-controlled WM system. However, when ratio of errors with and without MTB was analyzed, children with high WMC made more errors compared to children with low WMC. Developmental improvements in children's WMC do not appear to advantage listening in the presence of distracting background noise. Therefore, enhancement of target speech in children's learning environments is crucial.
我们使用双耳分听任务，对125名儿童的听觉分心易感性及其与工作记忆容量（WMC）的关联进行了研究。在有和没有干扰性多说话者嘈杂声（MTB）的情况下测量双耳分听任务的表现。对来自被忽略耳朵的侵入性错误以及两种条件之间任何类型的总体错误进行建模，以解释WMC的作用以及MTB的潜在调节作用，同时控制年龄。当以MTB和无MTB条件之间的错误绝对差异表示时，听觉分心易感性与WMC和年龄无关。也就是说，WMC较高的儿童在忽略嘈杂声干扰方面并不比WMC较低的儿童更好。这表明无关声音会强制性进入言语短期记忆，并且不会被注意力控制的工作记忆系统有效抑制。然而，当分析有MTB和无MTB时的错误比率时，与WMC较低的儿童相比，WMC较高的儿童犯的错误更多。儿童WMC的发展改善似乎并没有在存在干扰性背景噪音的情况下有利于听力。因此，在儿童学习环境中增强目标语音至关重要。
