Parker and his colleagues Essays

Parker and his colleagues Essays Parker and his colleagues Essay Parker and his colleagues Essay Experiment two used a white noise cue while experiment one used a 1000 Hz pure tone. In both experiments a significant response time advantage was found for valid cues at the short SOA of 200ms. The results obtained mirror those found by Spence Driver (1994) for exogenous processing in that valid cues produced a response time advantage for short cue-target SOA’s. Experiments 3, 4 and 5 tested endogenous auditory attention as opposed to the first two experiments which tested exogenous processing.The informative cues used differed from the uninformative spatial cues of experiment 1 and 2. It was found that for this experiment (3) response time was faster for all SOA levels. The faster response time for all SOA levels in experiment 3 says that the use of informative cues pushes attention towards the target. It was predicted that significant response time advantage would occur at the middle and long SOA levels (500ms and 1100ms) for valid cues as opposed to the invalid cues.On acquisition of the cue information, the subject can shift spatial attention to the likely location of the subsequent target location. In experiment 3 a significant response time advantage was found at all SOA for valid cues. Despite the significant response time advantage found for valid cues at the short SOA (200ms), these results were expected. While the significant response time advantage found for the short SOA condition (200ms) is not necessary expected with a cognitive based cue, the cue used in experiment 3 (and in subsequent experiment 5) was both informative and spatial based.The initial capture of attention to the spatial location of the cue would aid response time advantage at the short SOA condition (200ms), while the knowledge that the cue is informative would keep attention focused on the spatial location of the cue for longer aiding response time advantage for the other SOA conditions (500ms 1100ms). In experiment 4 the spatial component of the informative cue was removed to investigate pure endogenous processing. The results obtained for experiment 4 found a significant response time advantage for valid cues only at the middle SOA condition (500ms).The lack of a response time advantage for valid cues at the shorter SOA of 200ms can be expected with a purely endogenous cue, however at the longer SOA of 1100ms a response time advantage was expected to be found. The addition of extra subjects may have produced a significant response time advantage for the SOA condition of 1100ms, however the same may be said for the short SOA of 200ms which also had a moderate average valid cue response time advantage (16ms).Spence and Driver (1996) found that by using purely endogenous cues (side blocking and central arrow) with an auditory target response time were significant for higher SOA (600-900ms) and since the task still involved visual cues the results may have been affected by it. The results of the experiment supported the earlier findings in experiment 3 wherein, a significant response time advantage was found for valid cues for all SOA conditions in experiment 5. The lack of spatial cuing decreased the response time of subjects for they did not have basis for localization.Flanagan, McAnally, Martin, Meehan Oldfield (1998) visual search times were reduced when spatially informative auditory information was supplied. In comparison to experiment 3 overall response times were about 30ms faster in experiment 5. The introduction of speech alone did not have the effect of reducing response times in experiment 4 where a non-spatial speech cue was u sed. Unfortunately, this assumption cannot be made in this case due to the fact that not all subjects who completed experiment 3 also completed experiment 5.The successful use of virtual 3-dimensional audio in laboratory experiments have been supported by other researches Parker and his colleagues (2004) studied the effects of supplementing head-down displays with 3-dimensional audio during visual target acquisition found that it improved performance during visual acquisition tasks, in fact the addition of 3-D audio resulted in significant reduction in visual acquisition time and a significant reduction of perceived workload and improved situational awareness.Flanagan et al (1998) also used virtual 3-D audio in an experiment which compared an unaided search with visual and auditory search cues for targets outside the visual field. The pure tone was initially used as the pure tone will give side discrimination without distinct elevation discrimination. With cues and targets seeming t o emanate from the same spatial position, in the case of high targets, the effect of priming cannot be discounted in any response time advantage observed for valid high targets.While the faster response times observed in the current experiments were not significant, it is a concern as to why faster responses were recorded. Spence and Driver used cue duration of 100ms followed by target duration of 100ms, while in the current experiment cue duration was 200ms with the target also of duration 200ms Generally each experiment was analyzed individually with not all subjects completing the three experiments relating to this observed effect (experiments 3, 4 5). Flanagan, McAnally, Martin, Meehan Oldfield (1998) found that with the use of spatially informative auditory information, visual search times were reduced.They used a spatial localization task in which the search for a visual target was aided by either a visual arrow or an auditory cue. They found that both the visual and auditor y cues aided in significantly reducing the search time when compared to an unaided search. With evidence suggesting that attentional capacity is modality-specific (Duncan, Martens Ward, 1997) and that auditory cues can help with a visual spatial localisation task (Flanagan, McAnally, Martin, Meehan Oldfield, 1998), the nature of the links between auditory and visual streams in spatial attention is of great importance.In conclusion, our experiments have clearly demonstrated that 3-dimensional audio can be used successfully in testing auditory attention. The results of the experiments supports what has been reported by the research of Spence and Driver (1994), thus indicating that informative and spatial auditory cues increases response time. These findings have practical implications in the design of human interface systems where visual targets can be enhanced by virtual auditory cues in the form of pure tone or words.Although the findings have validated the existence of cuing para digms for auditory attention, much has to be learned in the study of audition and its practical implications.ReferencesBedard, M. A. , El Massioui, F. E. , Pillon, B. , Nandrino, J. L. (1993). Time for reorienting of attention: A premotor hypothesis of the underlying mechanism. Neuropsychologia, 31, 241–249. Begault, D. Pittman, M. (1996) Three-Dimensional Audio Versus Head-Down Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System Displays, International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 6(1), 79-93.