Bodnár Andor L, Mock Jeffrey R, Golob Edward J
Department of Psychology, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA.
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, 21205-2105, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2025 Feb;87(2):511-530. doi: 10.3758/s13414-024-02995-3. Epub 2024 Dec 16.
Research on endogenous auditory spatial attention typically uses headphones or sounds in the frontal hemispace, which undersamples panoramic spatial hearing. Crossmodal attention studies also show that visual information impacts spatial hearing and attention. Given the overlap between vision and audition in frontal space, we tested the hypothesis that the distribution of endogenous auditory spatial attention would differ when attending to the front versus back hemispace. Participants performed a non-spatial discrimination task where most sounds were presented at a standard location, but occasionally shifted to other locations. Auditory spatial attention cueing and gradient effects across locations were measured in five experiments. Accuracy was greatest at standard versus shift locations, and was comparable when attending to the front or back. Reaction time measures of cueing and gradient effects were larger when attending to the front versus back midline, a finding that was evident when the range of spatial locations was 180° or 360°. When participants were blindfolded, the front/back differences were still present. Sound localization and divided attention tasks showed that the front/back differences were attentional, rather than perceptual, in nature. Collectively, the findings reveal that the impact of endogenous auditory spatial attention depends on where attention is being focused.
关于内源性听觉空间注意力的研究通常使用耳机或在前半空间呈现声音，这对全景空间听觉的采样不足。跨模态注意力研究还表明，视觉信息会影响空间听觉和注意力。鉴于视觉和听觉在额叶空间存在重叠，我们检验了这样一个假设：当关注前半空间与后半空间时，内源性听觉空间注意力的分布会有所不同。参与者执行一项非空间辨别任务，其中大多数声音在标准位置呈现，但偶尔会转移到其他位置。在五个实验中测量了跨位置的听觉空间注意力提示和梯度效应。在标准位置与转移位置的准确性最高，并且在关注前方或后方时相当。当关注前中线与后中线时，提示和梯度效应的反应时间测量值更大，当空间位置范围为180°或360°时，这一发现很明显。当参与者被蒙上眼睛时，前后差异仍然存在。声音定位和分心任务表明，前后差异本质上是注意力方面的，而非感知方面的。总体而言，这些发现揭示了内源性听觉空间注意力的影响取决于注意力集中的位置。
