Mondor T A, Bregman A S
McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Percept Psychophys. 1994 Sep;56(3):268-76. doi: 10.3758/bf03209761.
Three experiments were conducted to determine whether attention may be allocated to a specific frequency region. On each trial, a frequency cue was presented and was followed by a target tone. The cue indicated the most likely frequency of the forthcoming target about which the listeners were required to make a duration judgment. It was reasoned that if listeners are able to allocate attention to the cued frequency region, then judgments of any characteristic of a tone of the cued frequency should be facilitated relative to tones of different frequencies. Results indicated that duration judgements were made more quickly and accurately when the cue provided accurate frequency information than when it did not. In addition, performance generally declined as the frequency separation between cue and target increased. These effects are interpreted as an indication that listeners may use a frequency cue to allocate attention to a specific frequency region and that, under these conditions, the shape of the attentional focus conforms to a gradient. The possible similarities of covert orienting mechanisms in vision and audition are discussed.
进行了三项实验以确定注意力是否可以分配到特定的频率区域。在每次试验中，呈现一个频率提示，随后是一个目标音调。该提示表明即将出现的目标最可能的频率，听众需要对该目标进行时长判断。据推测，如果听众能够将注意力分配到提示的频率区域，那么相对于不同频率的音调，对提示频率音调的任何特征的判断都应该更容易。结果表明，当提示提供准确的频率信息时，时长判断比不提供时更快、更准确。此外，随着提示和目标之间的频率间隔增加，表现通常会下降。这些效应被解释为表明听众可能使用频率提示将注意力分配到特定的频率区域，并且在这些条件下，注意力焦点的形状符合梯度。讨论了视觉和听觉中隐蔽定向机制可能的相似性。
