Auditory statistical learning: predictive frequency information affects the deployment of contextually mediated attentional resources on perceptual tasks

Previously reward-associated sounds interfere with goal-directed auditory processing

Previously reward-associated stimuli have consistently been shown to involuntarily capture attention in the visual domain. Although previously reward-associated but currently task-irrelevant sounds have also been shown to interfere with visual processing, it remains unclear whether such stimuli can interfere with the processing of task-relevant auditory information. To address this question, we modified a dichotic listening task to measure interference from task-irrelevant but previously reward-associated sounds. In a training phase, participants were simultaneously presented with a spoken letter and number in different auditory streams and learned to associate the correct identification of each of three letters with high, low, and no monetary reward, respectively. In a subsequent test phase, participants were again presented with the same auditory stimuli but were instead instructed to report the number while ignoring spoken letters. In both the training and test phases, response time measures demonstrated that attention was biased in favour of the auditory stimulus associated with high value. Our findings demonstrate that attention can be biased towards learned reward cues in the auditory domain, interfering with goal-directed auditory processing.

Experience-Driven Auditory Attention

In addition to conscious goals and stimulus salience, an observer's prior experience also influences selective attention. Early studies demonstrated experience-driven effects on attention mainly in the visual modality, but increasing evidence shows that experience drives auditory selection as well. We review evidence for a multiple-levels framework of auditory attention, in which experience-driven attention relies on mechanisms that acquire control settings and mechanisms that guide attention towards selected stimuli. Mechanisms of acquisition include cue-target associative learning, reward learning, and sensitivity to prior selection history. Once acquired, implementation of these biases can occur either consciously or unconsciously. Future research should more fully characterize the sources of experience-driven auditory attention and investigate the neural mechanisms used to acquire and implement experience-driven auditory attention.