Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Faculty of Rehabilitation, Kawasaki University of Medical Welfare, Kurashiki, Okayama, Japan.
Department of Rehabilitation, Kurashiki Central Hospital, Kurashiki, Okayama, Japan.
BMC Neurosci. 2024 Oct 24;25(1):54. doi: 10.1186/s12868-024-00909-5.
Several cognitive functions are related to sex. However, the relationship between auditory attention and sex remains unclear. The present study aimed to explore sex differences in auditory saliency judgments, with a particular focus on bottom-up type auditory attention.
Forty-five typical adults (mean age: 21.5 ± 0.64 years) with no known hearing deficits, intelligence abnormalities, or attention deficits were enrolled in this study. They were tasked with annotating attention capturing sounds from five audio clips played in a soundproof room. Each stimulus contained ten salient sounds randomly placed within a 1-min natural soundscape. We conducted a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) analysis using the number of responses to salient sounds as the dependent variable, sex as the between-subjects factor, duration, maximum loudness, and maximum spectrum of each sound as the within-subjects factor, and each sound event and participant as the variable effect.
No significant differences were found between male and female groups in age, hearing threshold, intellectual function, and attention function (all p > 0.05). Analysis confirmed 77 distinct sound events, with individual response rates of 4.0-100%. In a GLMM analysis, the main effect of sex was not statistically significant (p = 0.458). Duration and spectrum had a significant effect on response rate (p = 0.006 and p < 0.001). The effect of loudness was not statistically significant (p = 0.13).
The results suggest that male and female listeners do not differ significantly in their auditory saliency judgments based on the acoustic characteristics studied. This finding challenges the notion of inherent sex differences in bottom-up auditory attention and highlights the need for further research to explore other potential factors or conditions under which such differences might emerge.
多项认知功能与性别有关。然而，听觉注意力与性别的关系仍不清楚。本研究旨在探讨听觉突显判断中的性别差异，特别关注自下而上的听觉注意力。
45 名典型成年人（平均年龄：21.5±0.64 岁），无已知听力缺陷、智力异常或注意力缺陷，在隔声室内播放五个音频片段，任务是对引人注意的声音进行标注。每个刺激包含十个随机放置在 1 分钟自然音景中的突出声音。我们使用对突出声音的反应数量作为因变量，性别作为被试间因素，每个声音的持续时间、最大响度和最大频谱作为被试内因素，每个声音事件和被试作为变量效应，进行广义线性混合模型（GLMM）分析。
男女组在年龄、听力阈值、智力功能和注意力功能方面均无显著差异（均 p>0.05）。分析确认了 77 个不同的声音事件，个体反应率为 4.0-100%。在 GLMM 分析中，性别的主效应不具有统计学意义（p=0.458）。持续时间和频谱对反应率有显著影响（p=0.006 和 p<0.001）。响度的影响不具有统计学意义（p=0.13）。
结果表明，男性和女性听众在基于所研究的声学特征的听觉突显判断方面没有显著差异。这一发现挑战了自下而上的听觉注意力中存在固有性别差异的观点，并强调需要进一步研究以探索其他潜在因素或条件下可能出现的差异。
