Attention, Awareness, and the Perception of Auditory Scenes

Abstract

Auditory perception and cognition entails both low-level and high-level processes, which are likely to interact with each other to create our rich conscious experience of soundscapes. Recent research that we review has revealed numerous influences of high-level factors, such as attention, intention, and prior experience, on conscious auditory perception. And recently, studies have shown that auditory scene analysis tasks can exhibit multistability in a manner very similar to ambiguous visual stimuli, presenting a unique opportunity to study neural correlates of auditory awareness and the extent to which mechanisms of perception are shared across sensory modalities. Research has also led to a growing number of techniques through which auditory perception can be manipulated and even completely suppressed. Such findings have important consequences for our understanding of the mechanisms of perception and also should allow scientists to precisely distinguish the influences of different higher-level influences.

Physiology, Psychoacoustics and Cognition in Normal and Impaired Hearing

“…How can I use this information to plan an action? (3) Although attention is not always necessary, our awareness of a sound can be influenced by attention (Alain and Arnott 2000;Micheyl et al 2003;Fritz et al 2005;Shinn-Cunningham 2008;Snyder et al 2012;Gutschalk et al 2015). For example, we can choose whether to listen to-or ignore-the first violin, the string section, or even the whole orchestra.…”

Auditory and visual scene analysis: an overview

“…This is sometimes called 'bottom-up' processing and the stages can range from low-level to high-level. However, it is now acknowledged that the flow of processing is not unidirectional [21,22], and that there are strong 'top-down' influences from factors such as attention, the goals of the individual in the specific situation, expectations and prior knowledge [9,[23][24][25]. The relative influence of bottom-up and top-down processes and the way that they interact remain unclear.…”

“…Interest in top-down effects on auditory scene analysis has grown in recent years [24,25,29]. There is no doubt that perceptual experience can be modified by attention or intention [23] and by previous experience [17], in a way that is specific for each individual.…”

The effects of rhythm and melody on auditory stream segregation

“…However, in these studies, listeners were actively searching for familiar melodies, thus they intentionally attempted to segregate the interleaved sequences as it helped them to detect the target patterns. Several studies (e.g., McDermott et al, 2011) showed that familiarity with some given sounds (either through previous knowledge or exposure to the sounds prior to testing them as part of a mixture) enhances the likelihood of segregating them from other concurrent sounds even without the listener actively searching for the familiar sounds (for a review, see Snyder et al, 2012).…”