Allocating attention to complex auditory stimuli

描述（由申请人提供）：注意力似乎在听者从复杂环境中提取信息的能力中起着重要作用。第一个要检验的假设是，在复杂的环境中执行的听觉任务需要更多的注意力资源比在简单的环境。这将通过测量听众在干扰声存在下执行一项或多项任务的能力来测试。通过使用双重任务方法，将量化在不同任务之间分散注意力的成本。第二个假设是，听力受损的听众必须投入更多的注意力资源，同等的听觉任务-简单或复杂-比正常听力的听众。许多研究人员根据他们的研究得出结论，患有感觉神经性听力损失的听众的缺陷超出了退化的感觉表征。如果一个听力正常的听众可以用给定量的注意力资源来执行特定的任务，那么有可能受损的听众执行相同任务所需的资源量更大，其数量与听力损失的程度相关。通过再次采用双任务，听力受损的听众所使用的注意资源将与正常听力的听众在相同的任务中使用的注意资源进行比较。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Attention seems to play an important role in the ability of a listener to extract information from a complex environment. The first hypothesis to be tested is that auditory tasks performed in a complex environment require more attentional resources than in a simple environment. This will be tested by measuring the ability of listeners to perform one or more tasks in the presence of interfering sounds. By using the dual-task methodology, the costs of dividing attention between tasks will be quantified. The second hypothesis is that hearing impaired listeners must devote more attentional resources to equivalent auditory tasks - simple or complex - than must normal hearing listeners. A number of researchers have concluded, based on their research, that listeners with sensory-neural hearing loss have deficits that go beyond degraded sensory representations. If a normal hearing listener can perform a particular task with a given amount of attentional resources, it is possible that the amount of resources required for impaired listeners to do the same task is greater, in an amount correlated with the degree of hearing loss. By again employing the dual-task, the attentional resources used by hearing-impaired listeners will be compared with those used by normal-hearing listeners in the same tasks.