Attention and action: The role of response mappings in auditory attention switching

Abstract

Switching auditory attention incurs a performance decrement (i.e. auditory attention-switch costs). Using an auditory attention-switching paradigm, we aimed to generalise these across different response mappings. In all three experiments, two number words, spoken by a female and male speaker, were presented dichotically via headphones. A visual cue indicated the gender of the to-be-attended speaker in each trial. The task was a magnitude judgement of the relevant number word (i.e. smaller vs. larger than 5). We additionally varied the interval between cue onset and auditory stimulus onset (cue-stimulus interval) to explore cue-based preparatory effects. In Experiment 1, attention switching was more costly with direct-verbal responses (e.g. ‘smaller’) than in the shadowing task (e.g. ‘three’). In Experiment 2, performance was largely similar for direct-verbal responses and abstract-verbal responses (e.g. ‘left’). In Experiment 3, performance was generally worse with abstract-verbal responses than with abstract-manual responses (e.g. left key press) and auditory attention-switch costs were similar for both response mappings. Overall, auditory switch costs occurred more or less invariably across response mappings in categorical (magnitude) judgements suggesting a minor role of the response mapping in auditory attention switching. Furthermore, verbal identity-based judgements (i.e. shadowing) generally seem to benefit from ideomotor compatibility.

Keywords:

• Auditory selective attention
• Dichotic listening
• Response mapping
• Shadowing
• Task switching

We would like to thank Frank Wefers from the Institute of Technical Acoustics for help in producing the stimulus material, Caterina Schiffner for data collection and two reviewers for helpful comments on a previous version of this article.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

This research was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) [grant number KO 2045/11-1].

We would like to thank Frank Wefers from the Institute of Technical Acoustics for help in producing the stimulus material, Caterina Schiffner for data collection and two reviewers for helpful comments on a previous version of this article.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

This research was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) [grant number KO 2045/11-1].

Notes

¹ We conducted post-hoc analyses combining the data concerning the same tasks across experiments (i.e. direct-verbal responses of Experiments 1 and 2, and abstract-verbal responses of Experiments 2 and 3. In the magnitude-judgement task with direct-verbal responses, the preparatory reduction of switch costs was significant (30 ms, p < .05), but did not differ across experiments, F < 1. In the abstract-verbal responses of Experiments 2 and 3, we did not observe a preparatory reduction of switch costs in either experiment, F < 1.