Auditory selective attention is enhanced by a task-irrelevant temporally coherent visual stimulus in human listeners.
Auditory selective attention is enhanced by a task-irrelevant temporally coherent visual stimulus in human listeners.
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作者：
Maddox RK;Atilgan H;Bizley JK;Lee AK
在嘈杂的环境中，听力是通过从说话者的面部收集的相关动态视觉线索来帮助的，这种改善通常归因于视觉上强化的语言信息。在本研究中，我们的目的是测试视听时间连贯性单独的选择性听力的效果，没有语言混乱。我们提出了听众竞争的听觉流的幅度独立变化和视觉刺激与不同的半径，同时操纵跨模态的时间关系。当听觉目标的时间进程与视觉刺激相匹配时，表现会有所改善。事实上，任务无关的刺激功能之间的一致性表明，所观察到的改善源于整合的听觉和视觉流到跨模态对象，使听众更好地参加目标。这些发现表明，在日常条件下，听众经常可以看到声音的来源，视觉提供的时间线索可以帮助听众从混合物中选择一个声源。http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04995.001在鸡尾酒会的嘈杂声中，有许多声音的来源在争夺我们的注意力。即便如此，我们也可以很容易地屏蔽噪音，专注于谈话，特别是当我们和前面的人说话时。这是可能的，部分原因是我们的感觉系统结合了我们感官的输入。科学家们提出，当我们能够同时听到和看到某些东西时，我们的感知能力会更强，而不仅仅是能够听到它。例如，如果我们试图在鸡尾酒会上与某人打电话，背景噪音可能会淹没谈话。然而，当我们可以看到我们正在交谈的人时，更容易进行对话。Maddox等人现在已经在实验中探索了这种现象，这些实验涉及人类受试者收听被背景声音掩盖的音频流。在听的同时，受试者还观看了完全不相关的视频，这些视频与音频流或背景声音同步。然后，受试者必须执行一项任务，其中包括当他们听到音频流中的随机变化（如音调或音高的细微变化）时按下按钮。实验表明，当受试者看到与音频流同步的视频时，他们表现得很好。然而，当视频与背景声音同步时，他们的表现会下降。这表明，当我们在喧闹的鸡尾酒会上进行对话时，看到对方说话时面部的移动会产生对该人的综合视听印象，帮助我们将他们所说的话与背景中的所有噪音区分开来。然而，如果我们转向其他客人，我们就会分心，谈话可能会丢失。DOI：http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04995.002
In noisy settings, listening is aided by correlated dynamic visual cues gleaned from a talker's face—an improvement often attributed to visually reinforced linguistic information. In this study, we aimed to test the effect of audio–visual temporal coherence alone on selective listening, free of linguistic confounds. We presented listeners with competing auditory streams whose amplitude varied independently and a visual stimulus with varying radius, while manipulating the cross-modal temporal relationships. Performance improved when the auditory target's timecourse matched that of the visual stimulus. The fact that the coherence was between task-irrelevant stimulus features suggests that the observed improvement stemmed from the integration of auditory and visual streams into cross-modal objects, enabling listeners to better attend the target. These findings suggest that in everyday conditions, where listeners can often see the source of a sound, temporal cues provided by vision can help listeners to select one sound source from a mixture. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04995.001 In the noisy din of a cocktail party, there are many sources of sound that compete for our attention. Even so, we can easily block out the noise and focus on a conversation, especially when we are talking to someone in front of us. This is possible in part because our sensory system combines inputs from our senses. Scientists have proposed that our perception is stronger when we can hear and see something at the same time, as opposed to just being able to hear it. For example, if we tried to talk to someone on a phone during a cocktail party, the background noise would probably drown out the conversation. However, when we can see the person we are talking to, it is easier to hold a conversation. Maddox et al. have now explored this phenomenon in experiments that involved human subjects listening to an audio stream that was masked by background sound. While listening, the subjects also watched completely irrelevant videos that moved in sync with either the audio stream or with the background sound. The subjects then had to perform a task that involved pushing a button when they heard random changes (such as subtle changes in tone or pitch) in the audio stream. The experiment showed that the subjects performed well when they saw a video that was in sync with the audio stream. However, their performance dropped when the video was in sync with the background sound. This suggests that when we hold a conversation during a noisy cocktail party, seeing the other person's face move as they talk creates a combined audio–visual impression of that person, helping us separate what they are saying from all the noise in the background. However, if we turn to look at other guests, we become distracted and the conversation may become lost. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.04995.002