Holtze Björn, Jaeger Manuela, Debener Stefan, Adiloğlu Kamil, Mirkovic Bojana
Neuropsychology Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany.
Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT, Division Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology, Oldenburg, Germany.
Front Neurosci. 2021 Mar 22;15:643705. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2021.643705. eCollection 2021.
Difficulties in selectively attending to one among several speakers have mainly been associated with the distraction caused by ignored speech. Thus, in the current study, we investigated the neural processing of ignored speech in a two-competing-speaker paradigm. For this, we recorded the participant's brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG) to track the neural representation of the attended and ignored speech envelope. To provoke distraction, we occasionally embedded the participant's first name in the ignored speech stream. Retrospective reports as well as the presence of a P3 component in response to the name indicate that participants noticed the occurrence of their name. As predicted, the neural representation of the ignored speech envelope increased after the name was presented therein, suggesting that the name had attracted the participant's attention. Interestingly, in contrast to our hypothesis, the neural tracking of the attended speech envelope also increased after the name occurrence. On this account, we conclude that the name might not have primarily distracted the participants, at most for a brief duration, but that it alerted them to focus to their actual task. These observations remained robust even when the sound intensity of the ignored speech stream, and thus the sound intensity of the name, was attenuated.
在多个说话者中选择性地关注其中一个说话者的困难主要与被忽视的语音所造成的干扰有关。因此，在当前的研究中，我们在双竞争说话者范式下研究了被忽视语音的神经处理过程。为此，我们使用脑电图（EEG）记录参与者的大脑活动，以追踪被关注和被忽视语音包络的神经表征。为了引发干扰，我们偶尔会在被忽视的语音流中嵌入参与者的名字。回顾性报告以及对名字做出反应时P3成分的出现表明参与者注意到了他们名字的出现。正如预期的那样，在名字出现在被忽视的语音包络中之后，其神经表征增加了，这表明名字吸引了参与者的注意力。有趣的是，与我们的假设相反，在名字出现之后，被关注语音包络的神经追踪也增加了。基于此，我们得出结论，名字可能至多在短时间内并没有主要分散参与者的注意力，而是提醒他们专注于实际任务。即使被忽视语音流的声音强度，也就是名字的声音强度被减弱，这些观察结果仍然很可靠。
