Yahav Paz Har-Shai, Rabinovitch Eshed, Korisky Adi, Vaknin Harel Renana, Bliechner Martin, Zion Golumbic Elana
The Gonda Center for Multidisciplinary Brain Research, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 5290002, Israel.
Department of Psychology, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany.
eNeuro. 2025 Jun 24;12(6). doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0132-24.2025. Print 2025 Jun.
Paying attention to a target talker in multitalker scenarios is associated with its more accurate neural tracking relative to competing non-target speech. This "neural bias" to target speech has largely been demonstrated in experimental setups where target and non-target speech are acoustically controlled and interchangeable. However, in real-life situations this is rarely the case. For example, listeners often look at the talker they are paying attention to while non-target speech is heard (but not seen) from peripheral locations. To enhance the ecological-relevance of attention research, here we studied whether neural bias toward target speech is observed in a spatially realistic audiovisual context and how this is affected by switching the identity of the target talker. Group-level results show robust neural bias toward target speech, an effect that persisted and generalized after switching the identity of the target talker. In line with previous studies, this supports the utility of the speech-tracking approach for studying speech processing and attention in spatially realistic settings. However, a more nuanced picture emerges when inspecting data of individual participants. Although reliable neural speech tracking could be established in most participants, this was not correlated with neural bias or with behavioral performance, and >50% of participants showed similarly robust neural tracking of both target and non-target speech. These results indicate that neural bias toward the target is not a ubiquitous, or necessary, marker of selective attention (at least as measured from scalp-EEG), and suggest that individuals diverge in their internal prioritization among concurrent speech, perhaps reflecting different listening strategies or capabilities under realistic conditions.
在多说话者场景中关注目标说话者，与相对于竞争性非目标语音而言更准确的神经追踪相关。相对于竞争性非目标语音而言，这种对目标语音的“神经偏向”在实验设置中已得到很大程度的证明，在这些实验设置中，目标语音和非目标语音在声学上得到控制且可互换。然而，在现实生活中情况很少如此。例如，听众在关注某个说话者时，往往会看着该说话者，而此时非目标语音是从周边位置听到（但看不到）的。为了提高注意力研究的生态相关性，我们在此研究了在空间上逼真的视听环境中是否能观察到对目标语音的神经偏向，以及目标说话者身份的切换如何影响这种偏向。组水平的结果显示出对目标语音存在强大的神经偏向，这种效应在目标说话者身份切换后仍然存在并具有普遍性。与先前的研究一致，这支持了语音追踪方法在空间逼真环境中研究语音处理和注意力方面的实用性。然而，在检查个体参与者的数据时出现了更为细微的情况。尽管在大多数参与者中可以建立可靠的神经语音追踪，但这与神经偏向或行为表现并无关联，并且超过50%的参与者对目标语音和非目标语音都表现出同样强大的神经追踪。这些结果表明，对目标的神经偏向并非选择性注意力的普遍或必要标志（至少从头皮脑电图测量来看），并表明个体在同时出现的语音之间的内部优先级划分存在差异，这可能反映了现实条件下不同的倾听策略或能力。
