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This study examined the effect of a change in target voice on word recall during a multi-talker conversation. Two experiments were conducted using matrix sentences to assess the cost of a single endogenous switch in non-spatial attention. Performance in a yes-no recognition task was significantly worse when a target voice changed compared to when it remained the same after a turn-taking gap. We observed a decrease in target hit rate and sensitivity, and an increase in masker confusion errors following a change in voice. These results highlight the cognitive demands of not only engaging attention on a new talker, but also of disengaging attention from a previous target voice. This shows that exposure to a voice can have a biasing effect on attention that persists well after a turn-taking gap. A second experiment showed that there was no change in switching performance using different talker combinations. This demonstrates that switching costs were consistent and did not depend on the degree of acoustic differences in target voice characteristics.

The capacity of healthy adult listeners to accommodate to altered spectral cues to the source locations of broadband sounds has now been well documented. In recent years we have demonstrated that the degree and speed of accommodation are improved by using an integrated sensory-motor training protocol under anechoic conditions. Here we demonstrate that the learning which underpins the localization performance gains during the accommodation process using anechoic broadband training stimuli generalize to environmentally relevant scenarios. As previously, alterations to monaural spectral cues were produced by fitting participants with custom-made outer ear molds, worn during waking hours. Following acute degradations in localization performance, participants then underwent daily sensory-motor training to improve localization accuracy using broadband noise stimuli over ten days. Participants not only demonstrated post-training improvements in localization accuracy for broadband noises presented in the same set of positions used during training, but also for stimuli presented in untrained locations, for monosyllabic speech sounds, and for stimuli presented in reverberant conditions. These findings shed further light on the neuroplastic capacity of healthy listeners, and represent the next step in the development of training programs for users of assistive listening devices which degrade localization acuity by distorting or bypassing monaural cues.

A natural auditory scene often contains sound moving at varying velocities. Using a velocity contrast paradigm, we compared sensitivity to velocity changes between continuous and discontinuous trajectories. Subjects compared the velocities of two stimulus intervals that moved along a single trajectory, with and without a 1 second inter stimulus interval (ISI). We found thresholds were threefold larger for velocity increases in the instantaneous velocity change condition, as compared to instantaneous velocity decreases or thresholds for the delayed velocity transition condition. This result cannot be explained by the current static "snapshot" model of auditory motion perception and suggest a continuous process where the percept of velocity is influenced by previous history of stimulation.

To hear out a conversation against other talkers listeners overcome energetic and informational masking. Largely attributed to top-down processes, information masking has also been demonstrated using unintelligible speech and amplitude-modulated maskers suggesting bottom-up processes. We examined the role of speech-like amplitude modulations in information masking using a spatial masking release paradigm. Separating a target talker from two masker talkers produced a 20 dB improvement in speech reception threshold; 40% of which was attributed to a release from informational masking. When across frequency temporal modulations in the masker talkers are decorrelated the speech is unintelligible, although the within frequency modulation characteristics remains identical. Used as a masker as above, the information masking accounted for 37% of the spatial unmasking seen with this masker. This unintelligible and highly differentiable masker is unlikely to involve top-down processes. These data provides strong evidence of bottom-up masking involving speech-like, within-frequency modulations and that this, presumably low level process, can be modulated by selective spatial attention.

The aim of this research was to evaluate the ability to switch attention and selectively attend to relevant information in children (10-15 years) with persistent listening difficulties in noisy environments. A wide battery of clinical tests indicated that children with complaints of listening difficulties had otherwise normal hearing sensitivity and auditory processing skills. Here we show that these children are markedly slower to switch their attention compared to their age-matched peers. The results suggest poor attention switching, lack of response inhibition and/or poor listening effort consistent with a predominantly top-down (central) information processing deficit. A deficit in the ability to switch attention across talkers would provide the basis for this otherwise hidden listening disability, especially in noisy environments involving multiple talkers such as classrooms.