Covert auditory spatial orienting: an evaluation of the spatial relevance hypothesis.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform
; 35(4): 1178-91, 2009 Aug.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-19653757
ABSTRACT
The spatial relevance hypothesis (J. J. McDonald & L. M. Ward, 1999) proposes that covert auditory spatial orienting can only be beneficial to auditory processing when task stimuli are encoded spatially. We present a series of experiments that evaluate 2 key aspects of the hypothesis:
(a) that "reflexive activation of location-sensitive neurons is not sufficient to produce attentional facilitation" and (b) that "any task constraint that makes space important for the listener will produce auditory spatial cue effects" (p. 1236). Experiment 1 showed significant reflexive-orienting benefits on a nonspatial task, refuting the first claim. However, Experiments 2 to 4 reveal that informative spatial cues can improve performance on a nonspatial task, consistent with the second claim. Auditory spatial-cue benefits found with nonspatial tasks appear smaller and less reliable than those found in visual spatial-orienting studies, possibly due to differences in the coding of spatial information in vision and audition. The final experiments consider the mechanisms by which auditory spatial orienting might facilitate auditory processing and provide tentative evidence that attention enhances processing at one ear rather than influencing neurons tuned to the attended location.
Texto completo:
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Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Orientação
/
Atenção
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Percepção Auditiva
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Percepção Espacial
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Sinais (Psicologia)
Tipo de estudo:
Clinical_trials
Limite:
Adolescent
/
Adult
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Female
/
Humans
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Male
/
Middle aged
Idioma:
En
Revista:
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform
Ano de publicação:
2009
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Reino Unido