Ongoing Visual Task Research Articles

Auditory Versus Visual Interruptions: A Skeptical Perspective on Auditory Preemption and Suggestions for Advancing Theory

ABSTRACT Auditory preemption applies to the case where a person is engaged in an ongoing visual task and intermittently is required to engage in an additional discrete task. Some research has suggested that an interruption from an auditory discrete task is more damaging to the ongoing visual task than an equivalent interruption from a visual discrete task – a phenomenon that has been described formally as Auditory Preemption Theory. In this critical comment, I review the definition and history of the notion of auditory preemption and survey the most cited literature that has purported to show auditory preemption. I argue that the foundational evidence of auditory preemption has been characterized by shortcomings that weaken or preclude the conclusion that auditory preemption occurred. I argue that there is little evidence that the effect described by Auditory Preemption Theory is a modality effect – findings across laboratory studies appear approximately consistent with what would be expected due to sampling error if no auditory preemption effect exists. Plausible alternate candidates to explain phenomena that have been attributed to auditory preemption include startle responses, cognitive demands associated with speech generation in communication tasks, and possibly social demands associated with human communications. Suggestions from the open science movement to improve methods and theory are applied to the problem of building theories of interruption modalities. These suggestions include methodological reforms and making more explicit auxiliary assumptions about theories.

Simple auditory and visual interruptions of a continuous visual tracking task: modality effects and time course of interference

Research has produced conflicting evidence regarding whether performance of an on-going visual task is disrupted more by an interruption from a visual or an auditory alert. Tasks and alerts studied to date have been complex or idiosyncratic. This experiment examined how the modality of simple alerts—visual icons or auditory tones—affected performance of an on-going visual task. Participants (58 females and 4 males) tracked a visual target while performing a choice reaction time task in response to alerts. Visual alerts were more harmful to performance of the tracking task. Dual task workload was lowest with an auditory alert, provided there was not noise present. Interruptions affected tracking task performance for around 1500 ms. Results supported the predictions of Multiple Resources Theory and showed no evidence of auditory preemption. In practical applications for which an on-going visual task is interrupted, auditory alerts may be less disruptive and may reduce perceived workload. Practitioner Summary: Many practical scenarios involve on-going visual tasks that are interrupted by simple alerts requiring a simple response. Auditory alerts may be less disruptive than visual alerts and may reduce perceived workload. A conservative estimate is that the effects of even simple interruptions will last a minimum of 1500 ms. Abbreviations: ANOVA: analysis of variance; LSD: least significant difference; TLX: task load index

Effects of Nicotine on Task Switching and Distraction in Non-smokers. An fMRI Study

Nicotine improves sustained attention and reduces distractor interference, promoting cognitive stability. While stable performance may be beneficial in some situations, others require flexible updating of task demands. Frontoparietal networks, basal ganglia and thalamus contribute to an optimal balance of stable and flexible performance. We aimed to test how the cholinergic agonist nicotine modulates this balance and used an ongoing visual task including switch and distractor trials to gauge cognitive flexibility and stability respectively. Young healthy non-smokers (n = 39) received either a 7 mg transdermal nicotine or placebo patch in a double-blind, within-subject design one hour prior to performing the task in a 3 T MR scanner. Nicotine enhanced response times in all task conditions but did not significantly impact distractor or switch costs. Neurally, there was no significant nicotine induced modulation of distractor- or switch-related activity on group level. However, a brain-behaviour correlation analysis revealed that the nicotine-induced alterations of distractor costs correlated positively with distractor-related neural activity in the right intraparietal sulcus and the right pulvinar nucleus of the thalamus. We suggest that a nicotinic contribution to balancing stability and flexibility is weak in young healthy non-smokers. The brain-behaviour correlations imply that if nicotine reduces distractor interference, the modulation is found in thalamic-parietal networks.

Multiple Resource Loading and Auditory Preemption during a Continuous Signal Detection Task

Performance is typically reduced for dual-versus single-tasks, and potential interference between tasks can often be predicted by resource theories such as Multiple Resource Theory (MRT). MRT suggests that performance of two tasks drawing from the same set of cognitive resources is reduced in comparison to performance of two drawing on separate resource pools (e.g., visual-visual compared to visual-auditory). One drawback of MRT is the effect of auditory preemption on an ongoing visual task: whereas MRT expects no interference between auditory and visual tasks, auditory preemption theory posits a cost of attentional switching which may reduce performance. We investigated the effect of auditory preemption by administering an ongoing visual detection task and an interrupting auditory processing task. Results support the theory of auditory preemption as shown by a decline of response criterion ( C), but not perceptual sensitivity ( d’). MRT is also partially supported by an increase in perceived workload.

The role of age, working memory, and response inhibition in deviance distraction: A cross-sectional study.

Sounds deviating from an otherwise repeated or structured sequence capture attention and affect performance in an ongoing visual task negatively, testament to the balance between selective attention and change detection. Although deviance distraction has been the object of much research, its modulation across the life span has been more scarcely addressed. Recent findings suggest possible connections with working memory and response inhibition. In this study we measured the performance of children and young and older adults in a cross-modal oddball task (deviance distraction), a working memory task (working memory capacity), and a response inhibition task (ability to voluntarily inhibit an already planned action) with the aim to establish the contribution of the latter 2 to the first. Older adults exhibited significantly more deviance distraction than children and young adults (who did not differ from each other). Working memory capacity mediated deviance distraction in children and older adults (though in opposite directions) but not in young adults. Response inhibition capacities did not mediate deviance distraction in any of the age groups. Altogether the results suggest that although the increase in deviance distraction observed in old age may partly reflect the relative impairment of working memory mechanisms, there is no straightforward and stable relation between working memory capacity and deviance distraction across the life span. Furthermore, our results indicate that deviance distraction is unlikely to reflect the temporary inhibition of responses. (PsycINFO Database Record

Happiness increases distraction by auditory deviant stimuli.

Rare and unexpected changes (deviants) in an otherwise repeated stream of task-irrelevant auditory distractors (standards) capture attention and impair behavioural performance in an ongoing visual task. Recent evidence indicates that this effect is increased by sadness in a task involving neutral stimuli. We tested the hypothesis that such effect may not be limited to negative emotions but reflect a general depletion of attentional resources by examining whether a positive emotion (happiness) would increase deviance distraction too. Prior to performing an auditory-visual oddball task, happiness or a neutral mood was induced in participants by means of the exposure to music and the recollection of an autobiographical event. Results from the oddball task showed significantly larger deviance distraction following the induction of happiness. Interestingly, the small amount of distraction typically observed on the standard trial following a deviant trial (post-deviance distraction) was not increased by happiness. We speculate that happiness might interfere with the disengagement of attention from the deviant sound back towards the target stimulus (through the depletion of cognitive resources and/or mind wandering) but help subsequent cognitive control to recover from distraction.

Supporting Interruption Management and Multimodal Interface Design

The aim of this study was to integrate empirical data showing the effects of interrupting task modality on the performance of an ongoing visual-manual task and the interrupting task itself. The goal is to support interruption management and the design of multimodal interfaces. Multimodal interfaces have been proposed as a promising means to support interruption management.To ensure the effectiveness of this approach, their design needs to be based on an analysis of empirical data concerning the effectiveness of individual and redundant channels of information presentation. Three meta-analyses were conducted to contrast performance on an ongoing visual task and interrupting tasks as a function of interrupting task modality (auditory vs. tactile, auditory vs. visual, and single modality vs. redundant auditory-visual). In total, 68 studies were included and six moderator variables were considered. The main findings from the meta-analyses are that response times are faster for tactile interrupting tasks in case of low-urgency messages.Accuracy is higher with tactile interrupting tasks for low-complexity signals but higher with auditory interrupting tasks for high-complexity signals. Redundant auditory-visual combinations are preferable for communication tasks during high workload and with a small visual angle of separation. The three meta-analyses contribute to the knowledge base in multimodal information processing and design. They highlight the importance of moderator variables in predicting the effects of interruption task modality on ongoing and interrupting task performance. The findings from this research will help inform the design of multimodal interfaces in data-rich, event-driven domains.

Cross-Modal Distraction by Deviance

Unexpected task-irrelevant changes in the auditory or visual sensory channels have been shown to capture attention in an ineluctable manner and distract participants away from ongoing auditory or visual categorization tasks. We extend the study of this phenomenon by reporting the first within-participant comparison of deviance distraction in the tactile and auditory modalities. Using vibro-tactile-visual and auditory-visual cross-modal oddball tasks, we found that unexpected changes in the tactile and auditory modalities produced a number of functional similarities: A negative impact of distracter deviance on performance in the ongoing visual task, distraction on the subsequent trial (post-deviance distraction), and a similar decrease - but not the disappearance - of these effects across blocks. Despite these functional similarities, deviance distraction only correlated between the auditory and tactile modalities for the accuracy-based measure of deviance distraction and not for response latencies. Post-deviance distraction showed no correlation between modalities. Overall, the results suggest that behavioral deviance distraction may be underpinned by both modality-specific and multimodal mechanisms, while post-deviance distraction may predominantly relate to modality-specific processes.

Distraction by vibro-tactile and auditory novel stimuli

Event Abstract Back to Event Distraction by vibro-tactile and auditory novel stimuli Fabrice Parmentier1* and Jessica Ljungberg2 1 University of the Balearic Islands, Spain 2 Umea University, Sweden Past studies have shown that unexpected changes in a stream of auditory distracters capture attention in an ineluctable manner and delay responses in an ongoing categorization task. We extend the study of this phenomenon by reporting a within-participant comparison of novelty distraction in the tactile and auditory modalities using vibrotactile-visual and auditory-visual cross-modal oddball tasks. The results showed a number of functional similarities between the tactile and auditory modalities: a negative impact of distracter novelty on performance in the ongoing visual task (novelty distraction), distraction on the subsequent trial (post-novelty distraction), and a similar decrease of these effects across blocks. Keywords: Attention, Novel stimuli Conference: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Poster Sessions: Neurophysiology of Cognition and Attention Citation: Parmentier F and Ljungberg J (2011). Distraction by vibro-tactile and auditory novel stimuli. Conference Abstract: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00314 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 22 Nov 2011; Published Online: 28 Nov 2011. * Correspondence: Dr. Fabrice Parmentier, University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Mallorca, Spain, fabrice.parmentier@uib.es Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Fabrice Parmentier Jessica Ljungberg Google Fabrice Parmentier Jessica Ljungberg Google Scholar Fabrice Parmentier Jessica Ljungberg PubMed Fabrice Parmentier Jessica Ljungberg Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Effects of laterality and pitch height of an auditory accessory stimulus on horizontal response selection: The Simon effect and the SMARC effect

In the present article, we investigated the effects of pitch height and the presented ear (laterality) of an auditory stimulus, irrelevant to the ongoing visual task, on horizontal response selection. Performance was better when the response and the stimulated ear spatially corresponded (Simon effect), and when the spatial-musical association of response codes (SMARC) correspondence was maintained-that is, right (left) response with a high-pitched (low-pitched) tone. These findings reveal an automatic activation of spatially and musically associated responses by task-irrelevant auditory accessory stimuli. Pitch height is strong enough to influence the horizontal responses despite modality differences with task target.

Effects of preparatory set and task demands on auditory event-related potentials

Different instructional sets for moderate vs. high response speeds were given in a visual letter-matching task. On 50 percent of the trials an auditory probe requiring a simple RT response was presented in one of four temporal locations within the ongoing visual task. Probe locations were selected to maximize differences in the processing demands of the dual, auditory-visual task (see Posner and Boies, 1971). The N100 of the event-related potential associated with the auditory probe was larger under the high response speed set than under the moderate set, regardless of probe location. P300 amplitude was also greater under the high speed set relative to the moderate set but only when the task demands were high. The results were interpreted in terms of the interaction between arousal and task demands and a neural inhibition model of the P300 was discussed.