Impact of Spatial and Verbal Short-Term Memory Load on Auditory Spatial Attention Gradients.

Edward J Golob,Jeffrey R Mock,Jenna Winston

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02028

Edward J Golob, Jeffrey R Mock + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02028

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Abstract

Short-term memory load can impair attentional control, but prior work shows that the extent of the effect ranges from being very general to very specific. One factor for the mixed results may be reliance on point estimates of memory load effects on attention. Here we used auditory attention gradients as an analog measure to map-out the impact of short-term memory load over space. Verbal or spatial information was maintained during an auditory spatial attention task and compared to no-load. Stimuli were presented from five virtual locations in the frontal azimuth plane, and subjects focused on the midline. Reaction times progressively increased for lateral stimuli, indicating an attention gradient. Spatial load further slowed responses at lateral locations, particularly in the left hemispace, but had little effect at midline. Verbal memory load had no (Experiment 1), or a minimal (Experiment 2) influence on reaction times. Spatial and verbal load increased switch costs between memory encoding and attention tasks relative to the no load condition. The findings show that short-term memory influences the distribution of auditory attention over space; and that the specific pattern depends on the type of information in short-term memory.

Highlights

The auditory system has a special role in attention control because spatial hearing affords panoramic sensitivity that can detect threats, opportunities, and conspecifics at a distance or out of view (Schafer, 1977; Scharf, 1998)
Short-Term Memory Load × Stimulus Location Reaction times in the attention task as a function of stimulus location are shown in Figure 1 for the spatial (Figure 1A) and verbal (Figure 1B) conditions
The reaction times were calculated based on the 2nd – 10th stimuli in each trial because, as presented below, reaction times to the first stimuli were much longer than the other trials

Summary

Introduction

The auditory system has a special role in attention control because spatial hearing affords panoramic sensitivity that can detect threats, opportunities, and conspecifics at a distance or out of view (Schafer, 1977; Scharf, 1998). Orienting responses show that this acoustic “early warning system” can interrupt ongoing cognitive activities that utilize short-term memory. Interruptions to attend to potentially important information are often beneficial, but extract a cost to ongoing cognitive activities such as maintaining goal-related attentional biases (Cowan, 1995; Braver, 2012) and short-term memory processes (Hughes and Jones, 2001). Even though the onset of a sound is a potent way to induce attention capture, most studies on relations between attention and short-term memory are done using the visual modality. Loading short-term memory with several items, such as numbers, before trials in a visual attention task increases the likelihood of attention capture by irrelevant singletons (De Fockert, 2013), and has a general effect when the remembered information is not task-relevant (Lavie and De Fockert, 2005). Effects of short-term memory load on attention can be selective, with attention capture only when information in short-term memory overlaps with task-relevant

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