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Keur-Huizinga L, Kramer SE, de Geus EJC, Zekveld AA. A Multimodal Approach to Measuring Listening Effort: A Systematic Review on the Effects of Auditory Task Demand on Physiological Measures and Their Relationship. Ear Hear 2024:00003446-990000000-00297. [PMID: 38880960 DOI: 10.1097/aud.0000000000001508] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/18/2024]
Abstract
OBJECTIVES Listening effort involves the mental effort required to perceive an auditory stimulus, for example in noisy environments. Prolonged increased listening effort, for example due to impaired hearing ability, may increase risk of health complications. It is therefore important to identify valid and sensitive measures of listening effort. Physiological measures have been shown to be sensitive to auditory task demand manipulations and are considered to reflect changes in listening effort. Such measures include pupil dilation, alpha power, skin conductance level, and heart rate variability. The aim of the current systematic review was to provide an overview of studies to listening effort that used multiple physiological measures. The two main questions were: (1) what is the effect of changes in auditory task demand on simultaneously acquired physiological measures from various modalities? and (2) what is the relationship between the responses in these physiological measures? DESIGN Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, relevant articles were sought in PubMed, PsycInfo, and Web of Science and by examining the references of included articles. Search iterations with different combinations of psychophysiological measures were performed in conjunction with listening effort-related search terms. Quality was assessed using the Appraisal Tool for Cross-Sectional Studies. RESULTS A total of 297 articles were identified from three databases, of which 27 were included. One additional article was identified from reference lists. Of the total 28 included articles, 16 included an analysis regarding the relationship between the physiological measures. The overall quality of the included studies was reasonable. CONCLUSIONS The included studies showed that most of the physiological measures either show no effect to auditory task demand manipulations or a consistent effect in the expected direction. For example, pupil dilation increased, pre-ejection period decreased, and skin conductance level increased with increasing auditory task demand. Most of the relationships between the responses of these physiological measures were nonsignificant or weak. The physiological measures varied in their sensitivity to auditory task demand manipulations. One of the identified knowledge gaps was that the included studies mostly used tasks with high-performance levels, resulting in an underrepresentation of the physiological changes at lower performance levels. This makes it difficult to capture how the physiological responses behave across the full psychometric curve. Our results support the Framework for Understanding Effortful Listening and the need for a multimodal approach to listening effort. We furthermore discuss focus points for future studies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura Keur-Huizinga
- Amsterdam UMC location Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Ear & Hearing, Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
- Department of Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Sophia E Kramer
- Amsterdam UMC location Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Ear & Hearing, Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Eco J C de Geus
- Department of Biological Psychology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
| | - Adriana A Zekveld
- Amsterdam UMC location Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Ear & Hearing, Amsterdam Public Health Research Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Stodt B, Neudek D, Getzmann S, Wascher E, Martin R. Comparing auditory distance perception in real and virtual environments and the role of the loudness cue: A study based on event-related potentials. Hear Res 2024; 444:108968. [PMID: 38350176 DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2024.108968] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/30/2023] [Revised: 01/12/2024] [Accepted: 02/02/2024] [Indexed: 02/15/2024]
Abstract
The perception of the distance to a sound source is relevant in many everyday situations, not only in real spaces, but also in virtual reality (VR) environments. Where real rooms often reach their limits, VR offers far-reaching possibilities to simulate a wide range of acoustic scenarios. However, in virtual room acoustics a plausible reproduction of distance-related cues can be challenging. In the present study, we compared the detection of changes of the distance to a sound source and its neurocognitive correlates in a real and a virtual reverberant environment, using an active auditory oddball paradigm and EEG measures. The main goal was to test whether the experiments in the virtual and real environments produced equivalent behavioral and EEG results. Three loudspeakers were placed at ego-centric distances of 2 m (near), 4 m (center), and 8 m (far) in front of the participants (N = 20), each 66 cm below their ear level. Sequences of 500 ms noise stimuli were presented either from the center position (standards, 80 % of trials) or from the near or far position (targets, 10 % each). The participants had to indicate a target position via a joystick response ("near" or "far"). Sounds were emitted either by real loudspeakers in the real environment or rendered and played back for the corresponding positions via headphones in the virtual environment. In addition, within both environments, loudness of the auditory stimuli was either unaltered (natural loudness) or the loudness cue was manipulated, so that all three loudspeakers were perceived equally loud at the listener's position (matched loudness). The EEG analysis focused on the mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a, and P3b as correlates of deviance detection, attentional orientation, and context-updating/stimulus evaluation, respectively. Overall, behavioral data showed that detection of the target positions was reduced within the virtual environment, and especially when loudness was matched. Except for slight latency shifts in the virtual environment, EEG analysis indicated comparable patterns within both environments and independent of loudness settings. Thus, while the neurocognitive processing of changes in distance appears to be similar in virtual and real spaces, a proper representation of loudness appears to be crucial to achieve a good task performance in virtual acoustic environments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Benjamin Stodt
- Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors at the TU Dortmund (IfADo), Ardeystraße 67, Dortmund 44139, Germany.
| | - Daniel Neudek
- Institute of Communication Acoustics, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsstraße 150, Bochum 44780, Germany
| | - Stephan Getzmann
- Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors at the TU Dortmund (IfADo), Ardeystraße 67, Dortmund 44139, Germany
| | - Edmund Wascher
- Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors at the TU Dortmund (IfADo), Ardeystraße 67, Dortmund 44139, Germany
| | - Rainer Martin
- Institute of Communication Acoustics, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsstraße 150, Bochum 44780, Germany
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Liu H, Bai Y, Xu Z, Liu J, Ni G, Ming D. The scalp time-varying network of auditory spatial attention in "cocktail-party" situations. Hear Res 2024; 442:108946. [PMID: 38150794 DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2023.108946] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/09/2023] [Revised: 12/21/2023] [Accepted: 12/22/2023] [Indexed: 12/29/2023]
Abstract
Sound source localization in "cocktail-party" situations is a remarkable ability of the human auditory system. However, the neural mechanisms underlying auditory spatial attention are still largely unknown. In this study, the "cocktail-party" situations are simulated through multiple sound sources and presented through head-related transfer functions and headphones. Furthermore, the scalp time-varying network of auditory spatial attention is constructed using the high-temporal resolution electroencephalogram, and its network properties are measured quantitatively using graph theory analysis. The results show that the time-varying network of auditory spatial attention in "cocktail-party" situations is more complex and partially different than in simple acoustic situations, especially in the early- and middle-latency periods. The network coupling strength increases continuously over time, and the network hub shifts from the posterior temporal lobe to the parietal lobe and then to the frontal lobe region. In addition, the right hemisphere has a stronger network strength for processing auditory spatial information in "cocktail-party" situations, i.e., the right hemisphere has higher clustering levels, higher transmission efficiency, and more node degrees during the early- and middle-latency periods, while this phenomenon disappears and appears symmetrically during the late-latency period. These findings reveal different network patterns and properties of auditory spatial attention in "cocktail-party" situations during different periods and demonstrate the dominance of the right hemisphere in the dynamic processing of auditory spatial information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hongxing Liu
- Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072 China
| | - Yanru Bai
- Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072 China; Tianjin Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Neuroengineering, Tianjin 300072 China; Haihe Laboratory of Brain-Computer Interaction and Human-Machine Integration, Tianjin 300392 China
| | - Zihao Xu
- Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072 China
| | - Jihan Liu
- Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072 China
| | - Guangjian Ni
- Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072 China; Tianjin Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Neuroengineering, Tianjin 300072 China; Haihe Laboratory of Brain-Computer Interaction and Human-Machine Integration, Tianjin 300392 China.
| | - Dong Ming
- Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072 China; Tianjin Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Neuroengineering, Tianjin 300072 China; Haihe Laboratory of Brain-Computer Interaction and Human-Machine Integration, Tianjin 300392 China
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Xu M, Qian L, Wang S, Cai H, Sun Y, Thakor N, Qi X, Sun Y. Brain network analysis reveals convergent and divergent aberrations between mild stroke patients with cortical and subcortical infarcts during cognitive task performing. Front Aging Neurosci 2023; 15:1193292. [PMID: 37484690 PMCID: PMC10358837 DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2023.1193292] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/24/2023] [Accepted: 06/09/2023] [Indexed: 07/25/2023] Open
Abstract
Although consistent evidence has revealed that cognitive impairment is a common sequela in patients with mild stroke, few studies have focused on it, nor the impact of lesion location on cognitive function. Evidence on the neural mechanisms underlying the effects of mild stroke and lesion location on cognitive function is limited. This prompted us to conduct a comprehensive and quantitative study of functional brain network properties in mild stroke patients with different lesion locations. Specifically, an empirical approach was introduced in the present work to explore the impact of mild stroke-induced cognitive alterations on functional brain network reorganization during cognitive tasks (i.e., visual and auditory oddball). Electroencephalogram functional connectivity was estimated from three groups (i.e., 40 patients with cortical infarctions, 48 patients with subcortical infarctions, and 50 healthy controls). Using graph theoretical analysis, we quantitatively investigated the topological reorganization of functional brain networks at both global and nodal levels. Results showed that both patient groups had significantly worse behavioral performance on both tasks, with significantly longer reaction times and reduced response accuracy. Furthermore, decreased global and local efficiency were found in both patient groups, indicating a mild stroke-related disruption in information processing efficiency that is independent of lesion location. Regarding the nodal level, both divergent and convergent node strength distribution patterns were revealed between both patient groups, implying that mild stroke with different lesion locations would lead to complex regional alterations during visual and auditory information processing, while certain robust cognitive processes were independent of lesion location. These findings provide some of the first quantitative insights into the complex neural mechanisms of mild stroke-induced cognitive impairment and extend our understanding of underlying alterations in cognition-related brain networks induced by different lesion locations, which may help to promote post-stroke management and rehabilitation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mengru Xu
- Key Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering of Ministry of Education of China, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
| | - Linze Qian
- Key Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering of Ministry of Education of China, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
| | - Sujie Wang
- Key Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering of Ministry of Education of China, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
| | - Huaying Cai
- Department of Neurology, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China
| | - Yi Sun
- Department of Neurology, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China
| | - Nitish Thakor
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Xuchen Qi
- Department of Neurosurgery, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China
- Department of Neurosurgery, Shaoxing People's Hospital, Shaoxing, China
| | - Yu Sun
- Key Laboratory for Biomedical Engineering of Ministry of Education of China, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
- Department of Neurology, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China
- State Key Laboratory of Brain-Machine Intelligence, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
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Interaction of bottom-up and top-down neural mechanisms in spatial multi-talker speech perception. Curr Biol 2022; 32:3971-3986.e4. [PMID: 35973430 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.07.047] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/11/2022] [Revised: 06/08/2022] [Accepted: 07/19/2022] [Indexed: 11/20/2022]
Abstract
How the human auditory cortex represents spatially separated simultaneous talkers and how talkers' locations and voices modulate the neural representations of attended and unattended speech are unclear. Here, we measured the neural responses from electrodes implanted in neurosurgical patients as they performed single-talker and multi-talker speech perception tasks. We found that spatial separation between talkers caused a preferential encoding of the contralateral speech in Heschl's gyrus (HG), planum temporale (PT), and superior temporal gyrus (STG). Location and spectrotemporal features were encoded in different aspects of the neural response. Specifically, the talker's location changed the mean response level, whereas the talker's spectrotemporal features altered the variation of response around response's baseline. These components were differentially modulated by the attended talker's voice or location, which improved the population decoding of attended speech features. Attentional modulation due to the talker's voice only appeared in the auditory areas with longer latencies, but attentional modulation due to location was present throughout. Our results show that spatial multi-talker speech perception relies upon a separable pre-attentive neural representation, which could be further tuned by top-down attention to the location and voice of the talker.
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Hanenberg C, Schlüter MC, Getzmann S, Lewald J. Short-Term Audiovisual Spatial Training Enhances Electrophysiological Correlates of Auditory Selective Spatial Attention. Front Neurosci 2021; 15:645702. [PMID: 34276281 PMCID: PMC8280319 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2021.645702] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/23/2020] [Accepted: 06/09/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Audiovisual cross-modal training has been proposed as a tool to improve human spatial hearing. Here, we investigated training-induced modulations of event-related potential (ERP) components that have been associated with processes of auditory selective spatial attention when a speaker of interest has to be localized in a multiple speaker ("cocktail-party") scenario. Forty-five healthy participants were tested, including younger (19-29 years; n = 21) and older (66-76 years; n = 24) age groups. Three conditions of short-term training (duration 15 min) were compared, requiring localization of non-speech targets under "cocktail-party" conditions with either (1) synchronous presentation of co-localized auditory-target and visual stimuli (audiovisual-congruency training) or (2) immediate visual feedback on correct or incorrect localization responses (visual-feedback training), or (3) presentation of spatially incongruent auditory-target and visual stimuli presented at random positions with synchronous onset (control condition). Prior to and after training, participants were tested in an auditory spatial attention task (15 min), requiring localization of a predefined spoken word out of three distractor words, which were presented with synchronous stimulus onset from different positions. Peaks of ERP components were analyzed with a specific focus on the N2, which is known to be a correlate of auditory selective spatial attention. N2 amplitudes were significantly larger after audiovisual-congruency training compared with the remaining training conditions for younger, but not older, participants. Also, at the time of the N2, distributed source analysis revealed an enhancement of neural activity induced by audiovisual-congruency training in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (Brodmann area 9) for the younger group. These findings suggest that cross-modal processes induced by audiovisual-congruency training under "cocktail-party" conditions at a short time scale resulted in an enhancement of correlates of auditory selective spatial attention.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | - Stephan Getzmann
- Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, Dortmund, Germany
| | - Jörg Lewald
- Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
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Cortical processing of location and frequency changes of sounds in normal hearing listeners. Hear Res 2020; 400:108110. [PMID: 33220506 DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2020.108110] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/20/2020] [Revised: 10/09/2020] [Accepted: 11/06/2020] [Indexed: 11/21/2022]
Abstract
Sounds we hear in our daily life contain changes in the acoustic features (e.g., frequency, intensity, and duration or "what" information) and/or changes in location ("where" information). The purpose of this study was to examine the cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) to the change within a stimulus, the acoustic change complex (ACC), in frequency (F) and location (L) of the sound in normal hearing listeners. Fifteen right-handed young normal hearing listeners participated in the electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings. The acoustic stimuli were pure tones (base frequency at 250 Hz) of 1 s, with a perceivable change either in location (L, 180°), frequency (F, 5% and 50%), or both location and frequency (L+F) in the middle of the tone. Additionally, the 250 Hz tone of 1 sec without any change was used as a reference. The participants were asked to listen passively to the stimuli and not to move their heads during the testing. Compared to the reference tone, by which only the onset-CAEP was elicited, the tones containing changes (L, F, or L+F) elicited both onset-CAEP and the ACC. The waveform analysis of ACCs from the vertex electrode (electrode Cz) showed that, larger sound changes evoked larger peak amplitudes [e.g., (L+50%F)- > L-change; (L+50%F)- > 5%F-change] and shorter the peak latencies ([(L+5%F)- < 5%F-change; 50%F- < 5%F-change; (L+50%F)- < 5%F-change] . The current density patterns for the ACC N1' peak displayed some differences between L-change vs. F-change, supporting different cortical processing for "where" and "what" information of the sound; regardless of the nature of the sound change, larger changes evoked a stronger activation than smaller changes [e.g., L- > 5%F-change; (L+5%F)- > 5%F-change; 50%F- > 5%F-change] in frontal lobe regions including the cingulate gyrus, medial frontal gyrus (MFG), superior frontal gyrus (SFG), the limbic lobe cingulate gyrus, and the parietal lobe postcentral gyrus. The results suggested that sound change-detection involves memory-based acoustic comparison (the neural encoding for the sound change vs. neural encoding for the pre-change stimulus stored in memory) and involuntary attention switch.
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Moossavi A, Lotfi Y, Javanbakht M, Faghihzadeh S. Speech-evoked auditory brainstem response; electrophysiological evidence of upper brainstem facilitative role on sound lateralization in noise. Neurol Sci 2019; 41:611-617. [PMID: 31732889 DOI: 10.1007/s10072-019-04102-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/24/2018] [Accepted: 10/04/2019] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND AIM Sound lateralization/localization is one of the most important auditory processing abilities, which plays approved role in auditory streaming and speech perception in challenging situations like noisy places. In addition to the main role of lower brainstem centers like superior olivary complex in sound lateralization, efferent auditory system effects on improving auditory skills in everyday auditory challenging positions were revealed. This study evaluated noise effects on lateralization scores in correlation with an objective electrophysiologic test (Speech-ABR in noise), which objectively shows cumulative effects of the afferent and efferent auditory systems at the inferior colliculus and upper brainstem pathway. METHOD Fourteen normal-hearing subjects in the age range of 18 to 25 participated in this study. Lateralization scores in the quiet and noisy modes were evaluated. Speech-ABR in both ears for quiet mode and three different contralateral noise levels (SNR = + 5, 0, - 5) were recorded, too. Correlation of lateralization scores and Speech-ABR changes in noise was studied. RESULTS Significant decrease of lateralization scores with latency increase and amplitude decrease of Speech-ABR transient peaks (V, A, O) was seen with noise presentation. A high positive correlation between lateralization decrease with latency increase of onset peaks (V, A) and amplitude decrease of transient peaks (V, A, O) was found in low signal-to-noise ratios. CONCLUSION The study revealed that in high challenging auditory situations like auditory lateralization in noise, upper brainstem centers and pathways play a facilitative role for main auditory lateralization centers in lower levels.
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Affiliation(s)
- Abdollah Moossavi
- Department of Otolaryngology, School of Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
| | - Yones Lotfi
- Department of Audiology, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran
| | - Mohanna Javanbakht
- Department of Audiology, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
| | - Soghrat Faghihzadeh
- Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran
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Feierabend M, Karnath HO, Lewald J. Auditory Space Perception in the Blind: Horizontal Sound Localization in Acoustically Simple and Complex Situations. Perception 2019; 48:1039-1057. [PMID: 31462156 DOI: 10.1177/0301006619872062] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | - Hans-Otto Karnath
- Center of Neurology, Division of Neuropsychology, Hertie-Institute for Clinical Brain Research, University of Tübingen, Germany
| | - Jörg Lewald
- Department of Cognitive Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany; Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors, Dortmund, Germany
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