On the relation between auditory spatial attention and auditory perceptual asymmetries.

Laterality investigators have typically interpreted any perceptual asymmetry as a direct expression of the functional organization of the brain. However, many other confounding factors, including the asymmetric distribution of attention, may also contribute to either the magnitude or the direction of any of these advantages. In two experiments, attention was manipulated in a dichotic listening paradigm by presenting a preexposural tone cue to the ear from which the subject was required to report. The time available to orient attention was manipulated by varying the time period between the onset of the cue and the onset of the trial (stimulus onset asynchrony, or SOA). Results indicated that a right ear advantage for the identification of verbal material obtained at a 150-msec SOA was almost completely eliminated at an SOA of 450 msec. In addition, the direction of the ear advantage for emotion identification was found to depend on task difficulty. A left ear advantage, apparent when task difficulty was minimal, was reversed to a right ear advantage when difficulty was increased. These data are taken as evidence that, when subjects are faced with a difficult dichotic task, there is a general tendency for right-handed subjects to bias their attention toward the right ear. Such a tendency is shown not only to have likely seriously compromised the results of past investigations of functional perceptual asymmetries but also to be inconsistent with previously proposed theories of dichotic listening performance.     

Locus of information in words and the right visual field effect

The right visual field (RVF) advantage found for the identification or classification of words has usually been interpreted as evidence for left hemisphere language functions. It has more recently been explained as the result of the fact that the most informative part of the word, presumably the beginning, is in a region of better visual acuity. It is not clear from existing evidence that the beginnings of words are in fact more informative. The present study assessed the locus of information in words by deleting either the initial or terminal one or two letters. Subjects were required to generate a completion. Regardless of whether subjects were scored as correct for generating the original target word (as would be appropriate in a naming study) or for producing any legitimate word (as would be appropriate for a lexical decision study), the results indicated that most words have more information in the initial letters. Nevertheless, there are exceptions to this rule, and some words have more terminal information. Equal numbers of words with more initial information and with more terminal information were selected for two visual field studies in order to assess the effect of the locus of information on visual laterality. In neither a lexical decision study nor a naming study did locus of information affect the commonly observed right visual field superiority. Thus the distribution of information is not likely to be a major confounding variable in laterality studies employing horizontally presented words.     

Effect of distractor sounds on the auditory attentional blink

Four experiments were conducted to determine whether or not the presence and placement of distractors in a rapid serial auditory stream has any influence on the emergence of the auditory attentional blink (AB). Experiment 1 revealed that the presence of distractors is necessary to produce the auditory AB. In Experiments 2 and 3, the auditory AB was reduced when the distractor immediately following the probe was replaced by silence but not when the distractor following the target was replaced by silence. Finally, in Experiment 4, only a very small auditory AB was found to remain when all distractors following the probe were replaced by silence. These results suggest that the auditory AB is affected both by the overwriting of the probe by the distractors following it and by a reduction in discriminability generated by all of the distractors presented in the sequence.     

Item-specific congruency effects in nonverbal auditory Stroop

In the current study, participants judged as 'low' or 'high' either the location or the frequency of a single tone presented in one of two locations at one of two frequencies. The classification associated with the irrelevant feature could be either congruent or incongruent with the required response. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that responses were made more slowly on incongruent than on congruent trials, regardless of whether participants judged sounds according to their location or their pitch. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the probability that the classification associated with the irrelevant acoustic feature was consistent with the classification associated with the task-relevant dimension. In this experiment responses were made more quickly on congruent trials when the response associated with the irrelevant feature was likely to be consistent with the required response, and on incongruent trials when the response associated with the irrelevant feature was likely to be inconsistent with the required response.     

On the relation between auditory spatial attention and auditory perceptual asymmetries

Laterality investigators have typically interpreted any perceptual asymmetry as a direct expression of the functional organization of the brain. However, many other confounding factors, including the asymmetric distribution of attention, may also contribute to either the magnitude or the direction of any of these advantages. In two experiments, attention was manipulated in a dichotic listening paradigm by presenting a preexposural tone cue to the ear from which the subject was required to report. The time available to orient attention was manipulated by varying the time period between the onset of the cue and the onset of the trial (stimulus onset asynchrony, or SOA).Results indicated that a right ear advantage for the identification of verbal material obtained at a 150-msec SOA was almost completely eliminated at an SOA of 450 msec. In addition, the direction of the ear advantage for emotion identification was found to depend on task difficulty. A left ear advantage, apparent when task difficulty was minimal, was reversed to a right ear advantage when difficulty was increased. These data are taken as evidence that, when subjects are faced with a difficult dichotic task, there is a general tendency for right-handed subjects to bias their attention toward the right ear. Such a tendency is shown not only to have likely seriously compromised the results of past investigations of functional perceptual asymmetries but also to be inconsistent with previously proposed theories of dichotic listening performance.     

On the Relation Between Visual Spatial Attention and Visual Field Asymmetries

In the typical visual laterality experiment, words and letters are more rapidly and accurately identified in the right visual field than in the left. However, while such studies usually control fixation, the deployment of visual attention is rarely restricted. The present studies investigated the influence of visual attention on the visual field asymmetries normally observed in single-letter identification and lexical decision tasks. Attention was controlled using a peripheral cue that provided advance knowledge of the location of the forthcoming stimulus. The time period between the onset of the cue and the onset of the stimulus (Stimulus Onset Asynchrony—SOA) was varied, such that the time available for attention to focus upon the location was controlled. At short SO As a right visual field advantage for identifying single letters and for making lexical decisions was apparent. However, at longer SOAs letters and words presented in the two visual fields were identified equally well. It is concluded that visual field advantages arise from an interaction of attentional and structural factors and that the attentional component in visual field asymmetries must be controlled in order to approximate more closely a true assessment of the relative functional capabilities of the right and left cerebral hemispheres.     

Feature mismatch effects in auditory negative priming: interference as dependent on salient aspects of prior episodes

A handful of studies have revealed that withholding a response to a sound causes impaired responding to that sound when subsequently presented (Buchner & Steffens, 2001; Mondor, Leboe, & Leboe, 2005). In the present study, we investigated whether a switch in the location of a repeated sound might represent an additional source of this auditory negative priming effect. In all three of our experiments, participants performed a series of trials in which they withheld a response to a dichotic pair of prime sounds presented to each ear. A dichotic pair of probe sounds was then presented to each ear, and the participants were required to categorize one of them. Across these experiments, the participants were slower to categorize only repeated sounds that were presented in opposite locations.     

Couples in Therapy: Actor-Partner Analyses of the Relationships Between Adult Romantic Attachment and Marital Satisfaction

This study was the first to investigate the relationship between adult romantic attachment and marital satisfaction in a clinical sample of 172 distressed couples seeking therapy. Fifty-six therapy-seeking nondistressed couples were also assessed for comparison. Analyses of variance showed that attachment avoidance was a distinctive characteristic of distressed couples. Actor-partner analyses revealed that attachment avoidance (for men and women) and attachment anxiety (for women only) were predictive of marital dissatisfaction for distressed couples. Gender-stereotype discordant partner effects were also found. Results suggest that attachment orientations (especially avoidance) are relevant predictors of marital dissatisfaction in distressed couples seeking therapy, and that couple therapists can gain important information by assessing partners’ attachment orientations.     

Allocating attention to frequency regions

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 judgments 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.     

Predictability of the cue-target relation and the time-course of auditory inhibition of return

The possibility that the time-course of auditory inhibition of return (IOR) might depend on the temporal or spatial predictability of the cue-target relation was investigated. In all the experiments, a location cue was followed by a target that was to be localized. An inhibitory effect became apparent at a longer stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) when either the temporal or the spatial relation was predictable, rather than when either was unpredictable. A facilitative effect was apparent at a 100-msec SOA, irrespective of the predictability of the cue-target relation. These results establish that the time-course of the inhibitory component of location-based auditory IOR depends on the predictability of the temporal and spatial relations of cue and target. The theoretical implications of these results are considered, and a dual-process model of auditory selective attention is offered.