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Neural Effects of Attention Capture by Comprehensible Background Speech
Poster Session C, Saturday, September 13, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm, Field House
Jessie Rademacher1,2, Marc Schönwiesner1; 1Leipzig University, 2Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences
Aims: In our daily lives, selective auditory attention allows us to focus on relevant information while filtering out distractions. Background stimuli can, however, shift the focus of attention if they are surprising or inherently relevant to the individual. While attention capture by deviant, surprising stimuli is well-examined, the role of background speech in this process remains less clear. Specifically, the extent to which unattended speech is semantically processed and to which degree its intelligibility and semantic content drive attentional shifts remain debated. To address these questions, we developed a novel experimental approach to isolate comprehension effects by using background speech in a constructed micro-language, both before and after participants acquired fluent listening comprehension. Method: We examined auditory attention capture mechanisms in healthy individuals by employing electroencephalography (EEG) during an auditory task with background speech in a micro-language. Participants performed this task both before and after training in this micro-language, allowing us to isolate the effect of speech comprehension on attentional processes. Additionally, we included deviant environmental sounds and phoneme deviations in the background speech to compare attention capture mechanisms elicited by different auditory stimuli. Neural responses were analyzed using the multivariate temporal response function approach. Results: We show behavioral differences and neural correlates of attention capture before and after participants acquired comprehension of the background language. Specifically, differences in timing and topography of neural encoding for both target and distractor streams, compared between attention-capturing comprehensible and incomprehensible background speech, deviant sounds and phoneme deviations are shown. Additionally, we highlight differences in behavioral and neural responses to phoneme deviations in the distractor stream before and after comprehension, and contrast these effects with mere exposure to the language. Discussion: By clearly isolating comprehension effects, this research advances our understanding of attention capture effects by comprehensible background speech. Our findings highlight the role of intelligibility in guiding attentional shifts and provide insights into the neural underpinnings of selective auditory attention in complex listening environments.
Topic Areas: Control, Selection, and Executive Processes,