Abstract
Serial short-term memory is impaired by irrelevant sound, particularly when the sound changes acoustically. This acoustic effect is larger when the sound is presented to the left compared to the right ear (a left-ear disadvantage). Serial memory appears relatively insensitive to distraction from the semantic properties of a background sound. In contrast, short-term free recall of semantic-category exemplars is impaired by the semantic properties of background speech and is relatively insensitive to the sound's acoustic properties. This semantic effect is larger when the sound is presented to the right compared to the left ear (a right-ear disadvantage). In this paper, we outline a speculative neurocognitive fine-coarse model of these hemispheric differences in relation to short-term memory and selective attention, and explicate empirical directions in which this model can be critically evaluated.
Highlights
One way in which our understanding of hemispheric specialization has been advanced is through the study of auditory processing (Cherry, 1953; Broadbent, 1958; Hugdahl, 2003; Hugdahl et al, 2009)
Input to the left ear, for example, has privileged access to the right hemisphere (RH), whereas input to the right ear has privileged access to the left hemisphere (LH). Sound, such as speech, is predominately processed by the opposite hemisphere to its presentation source. These hemispheric differences result in the right-ear advantage in identifying or shadowing linguistic target-stimuli that are presented to the right-ear/LH (Kimura, 1961, 1967; Broadbent and Gregory, 1964; Studdert-Kennedy and Shankweiler, 1970) and the left-ear advantage for the processing of non-linguistic sound presented to the left-ear/RH (Tervaniemi and Hugdahl, 2003; Poeppel et al, 2004), especially with binaural sound presentation, ear-advantages with monaural presentation have been shown (Bradshaw et al, 1981)
We review existing work on how this hemispheric asymmetry influences selective attention and short-term memory in the context of cross-modal auditory distraction
Summary
One way in which our understanding of hemispheric specialization has been advanced is through the study of auditory processing (Cherry, 1953; Broadbent, 1958; Hugdahl, 2003; Hugdahl et al, 2009). ITEM BASED DISTRACTION (AND LEFT HEMISPHERE PROCESSING) As discussed above, acoustic variation appears to interfere selectively with serial memory in the RH, due to a conflict between deliberate order processes and an automatic analysis of acoustic change in the unattended sound.
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