Dichotic Listening: An Investigation of Sound For this report, I chose to focus on dichotic listening. I selected dichotic listening because I am interested in the subject matter, on how the brain function under these types of stimuli. Dichotic listening is a process meant to help us understand how the brain is divided into hemispheres and how those hemispheres differ in functionality. On a psychological level, it is also designed to help us understand selective attention to auditory stimuli. During a dichotic listening task, the participant wears a listening device (usually a set of headphones) and has a different auditory stimuli play in each ear, usually simultaneously. The stimuli played can range from pitches to clear noises, but is usually
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The fact that guests at a cocktail party are unable to completely tune out others conversations (evidenced by the fact that the statement of their names or other emotionally significant speech) implies that at any given moment, all sound information from multiple sources are at least being “taken in” by the working memory. Researchers have theorized that while all information is at least recognized by the cognitive processes, only that information which is deemed relevant makes its way to working memory. (Wood 257) This explanation makes sense in both the context of dichotic listening source differentiation as well as the cocktail party effect. During a dichotic listening task, participants cannot remember information that they were not asked to focus on because it is effectively “dumped out” before it can be stored in working memory due to its irrelevance. On the reverse, during a cocktail party (or other event in which the brain must navigate multiple sources of information) irrelevant information is constantly being input and exported, however, particular stimuli are able to catch the attention of the guest because they signal potentially important information (for example, hearing one’s own name may mean that someone is signaling for their attention). This ability to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant …show more content…
Passow et. Al (2012) extended research on the interaction between aging, attention control and auditory processing through a dichotic listening paradigm. Central auditory temporal processing is the cognitive function hypothesized to be crucial for the judgement of auditory stimuli recognition is crowded and noisy environments; decline in central auditory temporal processing has also been highly correlated with aging. However, these effects have been found to be able to be alleviated through an increased level of auditory selective attention- in other words, older participants who showed physiological declines in the areas of their brains, associated with auditory discernment were able to improve their ability to process multiple auditory stimuli when instructed to exert more attentional control toward the task at hand. Unfortunately, another hallmark sign of aging is the decreased ability to employ selective attentional control and an increased vulnerability to distraction. The current study employed an intensity modulated dichotic listening model and manipulated salience of auditory stimuli. (Passow et al.
The fact that guests at a cocktail party are unable to completely tune out others conversations (evidenced by the fact that the statement of their names or other emotionally significant speech) implies that at any given moment, all sound information from multiple sources are at least being “taken in” by the working memory. Researchers have theorized that while all information is at least recognized by the cognitive processes, only that information which is deemed relevant makes its way to working memory. (Wood 257) This explanation makes sense in both the context of dichotic listening source differentiation as well as the cocktail party effect. During a dichotic listening task, participants cannot remember information that they were not asked to focus on because it is effectively “dumped out” before it can be stored in working memory due to its irrelevance. On the reverse, during a cocktail party (or other event in which the brain must navigate multiple sources of information) irrelevant information is constantly being input and exported, however, particular stimuli are able to catch the attention of the guest because they signal potentially important information (for example, hearing one’s own name may mean that someone is signaling for their attention). This ability to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant …show more content…
Passow et. Al (2012) extended research on the interaction between aging, attention control and auditory processing through a dichotic listening paradigm. Central auditory temporal processing is the cognitive function hypothesized to be crucial for the judgement of auditory stimuli recognition is crowded and noisy environments; decline in central auditory temporal processing has also been highly correlated with aging. However, these effects have been found to be able to be alleviated through an increased level of auditory selective attention- in other words, older participants who showed physiological declines in the areas of their brains, associated with auditory discernment were able to improve their ability to process multiple auditory stimuli when instructed to exert more attentional control toward the task at hand. Unfortunately, another hallmark sign of aging is the decreased ability to employ selective attentional control and an increased vulnerability to distraction. The current study employed an intensity modulated dichotic listening model and manipulated salience of auditory stimuli. (Passow et al.