Abstract
We studied the effects of training on auditory attention in healthy adults with a speech perception task involving dichotically presented syllables. Training involved bottom-up manipulation (facilitating responses from the harder-to-report left ear through a decrease of right-ear stimulus intensity), top-down manipulation (focusing attention on the left-ear stimuli through instruction), or their combination. The results showed significant training-related effects for top-down training. These effects were evident as higher overall accuracy rates in the forced-left dichotic listening (DL) condition that sets demands on attentional control, as well as a response shift toward left-sided reports in the standard DL task. Moreover, a transfer effect was observed in an untrained auditory-spatial attention task involving bilateral stimulation where top-down training led to a relatively stronger focus on left-sided stimuli. Our results indicate that training of attentional control can modulate the allocation of attention in the auditory space in adults. Malleability of auditory attention in healthy adults raises the issue of potential training gains in individuals with attentional deficits.
References
(2008). A dichotic listening study of attention control in older adults. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 49, 299–304.
(2011). Effects of working-memory training on striatal dopamine release. Science, 333, 718.
(2005). Training effects on dual-task performance: Are there age-related differences in plasticity of attentional control? Psychology and Aging, 20, 695–709.
(2009). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.1.05) [Computer program].Retrieved from www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/
(1958). Perception and communication. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
(2008). Transfer of learning after updating training mediated by the striatum. Science, 320, 1510–1512.
(2007). Auditory attention – focusing the searchlight on sound. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 17, 437–455.
(2002). Dichotic listening and corpus callosum magnetic resonance imaging in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis with emphasis on sex differences. Neuropsychology, 16, 275–281.
(2000). Neurophysiological mechanisms of auditory selective attention in humans. Frontiers in Bioscience, 5, 84–94.
(2006). Corpus callosum size correlates with asymmetric performance on a dichotic listening task in healthy aging but not in Alzheimer’s disease. Neuropsychologia, 44, 208–217.
(2010). Integrating auditory and visual asymmetry. In , The two halves of the brain. Information processing in the cerebral hemispheres (pp. 417–438). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
(2001). Enhanced visual spatial attention ipsilateral to rTMS-induced ‘virtual lesions’ of human parietal cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 4, 953–957.
(1984). The effect of asymmetrically focused attention upon subsequent ear differences in dichotic listening. Neuropsychologia, 22, 337–351.
(2000). Lateralization of cognitive processes in the brain. Acta Psychologica, 105, 211–235.
(1986). The “forced-attention paradigm” in dichotic listening to CV syllables: A comparison between adults and children. Cortex, 22, 417–432.
(2008). The effect of stimulus intensity on the right ear advantage in dichotic listening. Neuroscience Letters, 431, 90–94.
(2009). Attention and cognitive control: Unfolding the dichotic listening story. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 50, 11–22.
(2009). How useful is executive control training? Age differences in near and far transfer of task-switching training. Developmental Science, 12, 978–990.
(1967). Functional asymmetry of the brain in dichotic listening. Cortex, 3, 163–178.
(2004). Neuropsychological assessment. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
(2008). Training and transfer effects in task switching. Memory & Cognition, 36, 1470–1483.
(2006). Identification of binaural integration deficits in children with the Competing Words Subtest: Standard score versus interaural asymmetry. International Journal of Audiology, 45, 545–558.
(2002). Interaural asymmetries revealed by dichotic listening tests in normal and dyslexic children. Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, 13, 428–437.
(2008). Auditory rehabilitation for interaural asymmetry: Preliminary evidence of improved dichotic listening performance following intensive training. International Journal of Audiology, 47, 84–97.
(1971). The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Edinburg Inventory. Neuropsychologia, 9, 97–113.
(2004). Increased prefrontal and parietal activity after training of working memory. Nature Neuroscience, 7, 75–79.
(1981). Ear asymmetry in an auditory spatial Stroop task as a function of handedness. Cortex, 17, 369–380.
(2006). Change from baseline and analysis of covariance revisited. Statistics in Medicine, 25, 4334–4344.
(2009). The effect of age on attentional modulation in dichotic listening. Developmental Neuropsychology, 34, 225–239.
(2011). Auditory rightward spatial bias varies as a function of age. Developmental Neuropsychology, 36, 367–387.
(2007). Interaural intensity difference and ear advantage in listening to dichotic consonant – vowel syllable pairs. Brain Research, 1185, 195–200.
(2004). Brain localization of attentional control in different age groups by combining functional and structural MRI. NeuroImage, 22, 912–919.
(1964). Selective attention in man. British Medical Bulletin, 20, 12–16.
(2010). Identification of attention and cognitive control networks in a parametric auditory fMRI study. Neuropsychologia, 48, 2075–2081.
(2009). Top-down and bottom-up interaction: Manipulating the dichotic listening ear advantage. Brain Research, 1250, 183–189.
