Effects of vision, listener head movement, and target location on spatial selective auditory attention

Abstract

Listeners can use spatial selective auditory attention (SSAA) to focus on one talker in a complex acoustic scene. We have reported [Macpherson & Ellis, ASA Salt Lake, 2016] that listeners’ ability to attend to a frontal target in the presence of spatially separated distractors is decreased in a head-movement condition, suggesting that listeners cannot rapidly update the focus of their SSAA to compensate fully for head motion. Participants reported anecdotally that being able to see the target loudspeaker seemed beneficial in directing SSAA. Here, we assessed the benefit of access to a visual reference frame in a similar task. Under lighted and dark conditions, on each trial, listeners either fixated toward 0 azimuth or oscillated their heads at ~0.5 Hz with an amplitude of ~±40 degrees while five different simultaneous equal-intensity sequences of four spoken digits were presented as target (at azimuths from 0 to 90 degrees) and four distractors (at azimuths ±22.5 and ±45 degrees relative to the central target). Listeners verbally reported the target sequence heard. Performance declined under head motion and with increasing target eccentricity, but not additionally in dark conditions, suggesting that a visual reference frame was not beneficial in directing SSAA in our task.Listeners can use spatial selective auditory attention (SSAA) to focus on one talker in a complex acoustic scene. We have reported [Macpherson & Ellis, ASA Salt Lake, 2016] that listeners’ ability to attend to a frontal target in the presence of spatially separated distractors is decreased in a head-movement condition, suggesting that listeners cannot rapidly update the focus of their SSAA to compensate fully for head motion. Participants reported anecdotally that being able to see the target loudspeaker seemed beneficial in directing SSAA. Here, we assessed the benefit of access to a visual reference frame in a similar task. Under lighted and dark conditions, on each trial, listeners either fixated toward 0 azimuth or oscillated their heads at ~0.5 Hz with an amplitude of ~±40 degrees while five different simultaneous equal-intensity sequences of four spoken digits were presented as target (at azimuths from 0 to 90 degrees) and four distractors (at azimuths ±22.5 and ±45 degrees relative to the central t...