Why are auditory novels distracting? Contrasting the roles of novelty, violation of expectation and stimulus change

Past studies show that novel auditory stimuli, presented in the context of an otherwise repeated sound, capture participants’ attention away from a focal task, resulting in measurable behavioral distraction. Novel sounds are traditionally defined as rare and unexpected but past studies have not sought to disentangle these concepts directly. Using a cross-modal oddball task, we contrasted these aspects orthogonally by manipulating the base rate and conditional probabilities of sound events. We report for the first time that behavioral distraction does not result from a sound’s novelty per se but from the violation of the cognitive system’s expectation based on the learning of conditional probabilities and, to some extent, the occurrence of a perceptual change from one sound to another.     

Distributed processing and cortical specialization for speech and environmental sounds in human temporal cortex

Using functional MRI, we investigated whether auditory processing of both speech and meaningful non-linguistic environmental sounds in superior and middle temporal cortex relies on a complex and spatially distributed neural system. We found that evidence for spatially distributed processing of speech and environmental sounds in a substantial extent of temporal cortices. Most importantly, regions previously reported as selective for speech over environmental sounds also contained distributed information. The results indicate that temporal cortices supporting complex auditory processing, including regions previously described as speech-selective, are in fact highly heterogeneous.     

Functional ear (a)symmetry in brainstem neural activity relevant to encoding of voice pitch: a precursor for hemispheric specialization?

Pitch processing is lateralized to the right hemisphere; linguistic pitch is further mediated by left cortical areas. This experiment investigates whether ear asymmetries vary in brainstem representation of pitch depending on linguistic status. Brainstem frequency-following responses (FFRs) were elicited by monaural stimulation of the left and right ear of 15 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese using two synthetic speech stimuli that differ in linguistic status of tone. One represented a native lexical tone (Tone 2: T2); the other, T2′, a nonnative variant in which the pitch contour was a mirror image of T2 with the same starting and ending frequencies. Two 40-ms portions of f₀ contours were selected in order to compare two regions (R1, early; R2 late) differing in pitch acceleration rate and perceptual saliency. In R2, linguistic status effects revealed that T2 exhibited a larger degree of FFR rightward ear asymmetry as reflected in f₀ amplitude relative to T2′. Relative to midline (ear asymmetry = 0), the only ear asymmetry reaching significance was that favoring left ear stimulation elicited by T2′. By left- and right-ear stimulation separately, FFRs elicited by T2 were larger than T2′ in the right ear only. Within T2′, FFRs elicited by the earlier region were larger than the later in both ears. Within T2, no significant differences in FFRS were observed between regions in either ear. Collectively, these findings support the idea that origins of cortical processing preferences for perceptually-salient portions of pitch are rooted in early, preattentive stages of processing in the brainstem.     

Effects of attention on dichotic listening in elderly and patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type

This article presents an overview of our studies in elderly and Alzheimer patients employing Kimura's dichotic digits paradigm as a measure for left hemispheric predominance for processing language stimuli. In addition to structural brain mechanisms, we demonstrated that attention modulates the direction and degree of ear asymmetry in dichotic listening. Elderly showed increasingly more difficulties focusing attention on the left ear (LE) with advancing age. Alzheimer patients showed severe deficits to allocate attention to the LE, which could result in a right ear advantage. These results may be attributed to a breakdown of the cortical attentional network which is mediated by frontal (inhibitory control of attention) and parietal regions (spatial attention and 'disengagement processes'). Both interhemispheric disconnectivity (callosal atrophy) and intrahemispheric disconnectivity (subcortical white matter lesions) appear to be important factors contributing to these findings.     

Attention and the right-ear advantage: What is the connection?

Dichotic listening originally was a means of studying attention. Half a century ago Doreen Kimura parlayed the dichotic method into a noninvasive indicator of lateralized cerebral language representation. The ubiquitous right-ear advantage (REA) for verbal material was accepted as a concomitant of left-sided language lateralization and preferential conduction of right-ear messages to the left hemisphere. As evidence has accumulated over the past 50years showing the REA to be dynamic and modifiable, the concept of attention has become essential for interpreting the findings. Progress in understanding the role of attention has been manifested as a transition from efforts to document attention effects to efforts to characterize their mechanisms. We summarize the relevant evidence, trace the evolution of explanatory models, and outline contemporary accounts of the role of attention in dichotic listening.     

Learning foreign sounds in an alien world: videogame training improves non-native speech categorization

Although speech categories are defined by multiple acoustic dimensions, some are perceptually weighted more than others and there are residual effects of native-language weightings in non-native speech perception. Recent research on nonlinguistic sound category learning suggests that the distribution characteristics of experienced sounds influence perceptual cue weights: Increasing variability across a dimension leads listeners to rely upon it less in subsequent category learning (Holt & Lotto, 2006). The present experiment investigated the implications of this among native Japanese learning English /r/-/l/ categories. Training was accomplished using a videogame paradigm that emphasizes associations among sound categories, visual information, and players' responses to videogame characters rather than overt categorization or explicit feedback. Subjects who played the game for 2.5h across 5 days exhibited improvements in /r/-/l/ perception on par with 2-4 weeks of explicit categorization training in previous research and exhibited a shift toward more native-like perceptual cue weights.     

医疗机构口头告知不宜扩大

口头告知界定的不明确给医疗机构及其医务人员带来了困扰。知情同意和告知义务虽被越来越多的医疗机构和公众关注,但对于告知方式并没有过多的注意,医疗机构因为口头告知导致损害赔偿的案件也不鲜见。本文探讨了医疗告知含义、医疗告知的多种方式,通过口头告知的利与弊来提出口头告知不宜过于扩大化。     

The effects of verbal operant training and response interruption and redirection on appropriate and inappropriate vocalizations

Past research has shown that response interruption and redirection (RIRD) can effectively decrease automatically reinforced motor behavior (Hagopian & Adelinis, 2001). Ahearn, Clark, MacDonald, and Chung (2007) found that a procedural adaptation of RIRD reduced vocal stereotypy and increased appropriate vocalizations for some children, although appropriate vocalizations were not targeted directly. The purpose of the current study was to examine the effects of directly targeting appropriate language (i.e., verbal operant training) on vocal stereotypy and appropriate speech in 3 children with an autism spectrum disorder. The effects of verbal operant (i.e., tact) training were evaluated in a nonconcurrent multiple baseline design across participants. In addition, RIRD was implemented with 2 of the 3 participants to further decrease levels of vocal stereotypy. Verbal operant training alone produced slightly lower levels of stereotypy and increased appropriate vocalizations for all 3 participants; however, RIRD was required to produce acceptably low levels of stereotypy for 2 of the 3 participants.     

The Influence of Sex,Gender, Self-Discrepancies,and Self-Awareness on Anger and Verbal Aggressiveness Among U.S. College Students

Abstract

Among a sample of 445 U.S. college students, the authors examined the extent to which individual differences (e.g., sex, gender, self-discrepancies, self-awareness) explained anger tendencies and verbal aggressiveness. Regression analyses showed that (a) the tendency to repress anger (anger-in) was explained by masculinity, desire to be masculine, and public self-awareness, R ² = .19, F(11, 433) = 8.44, p < .001; (b) the tendency to express anger (anger-out) was explained by sex, masculinity, and public self-awareness, R ² = .17, F(11, 433) = 7.38, p < .001; and (c) willingness to be verbally aggressive was explained by sex, femininity, and private self-awareness, R ² = .32, F(11, 433) = 16.94, p < .001. In addition, different types of individual difference variables accounted for anger tendencies and verbal aggressiveness across sex and gender categories, suggesting that anger and verbal aggressiveness may be driven by different psychological processes across types of participants.     

Stimulus expectancy modulates inferior frontal gyrus and premotor cortex activity in auditory perception

In studies on auditory speech perception, participants are often asked to perform active tasks, e.g. decide whether the perceived sound is a speech sound or not. However, information about the stimulus, inherent in such tasks, may induce expectations that cause altered activations not only in the auditory cortex, but also in frontal areas such as inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and motor cortices, even in the absence of an explicit task. To investigate this, we applied spectral mixes of a flute sound and either vowels or specific music instrument sounds (e.g. trumpet) in an fMRI study, in combination with three different instructions. The instructions either revealed no information about stimulus features, or explicit information about either the music instrument or the vowel features. The results demonstrated that, besides an involvement of posterior temporal areas, stimulus expectancy modulated in particular a network comprising IFG and premotor cortices during this passive listening task.