Auditory spatial negative priming: What is remembered of irrelevant sounds and their locations?

Abstract

The categorization and identification of previously ignored visual or auditory stimuli is typically slowed down--a phenomenon that has been called the negative priming effect and can be explained by the episodic retrieval of response-inadequate prime information and/or an inhibitory model. A similar after-effect has been found in visuospatial tasks: participants are slowed down in localizing a visual stimulus that appears at a previously ignored location. In the auditory modality, however, such an after-effect of ignoring a sound at a specific location has never been reported. Instead, participants are impaired in their localization performance when the sound at the previously ignored location changes identity, a finding which is compatible with the so-called feature-mismatch hypothesis. Here, we describe the properties of auditory spatial in contrast to visuospatial negative priming and report two experiments that specify the nature of this auditory after-effect. Experiment 1 shows that the detection of identity-location mismatches is a genuinely auditory phenomenon that can be replicated even when the sound sources are invisible. Experiment 2 reveals that the detection of sound-identity mismatches in the probe depends on the processing demands in the prime. This finding implies that the localization of irrelevant sound sources is not the inevitable consequence of processing the auditory prime scenario but depends on the difficulty of the target search process among distractor sounds.

Spatial negative priming: In touch, it’s all about location

“…Recently, Frings et al (2014) demonstrated that the size of tactile spatial NP is not modulated by whether or not there is a mismatch between the target and distractor features presented at the repeated location (i.e., the prime distractor and the probe target). This pattern of results is in line with what has previously been obtained in vision (see, e.g., Milliken et al, 1994;Tipper et al, 1995), whereas it contrasts with what has been seen in audition (where spatial NP was evident only when feature mismatch was present; Mayr et al, 2009;Mayr et al, 2014;Möller et al, 2013). Thus, Frings et al (2014) provided indicative evidence that touch behaves like vision when it comes to spatial NP, insofar as in touch and vision the perceptual interference during probe encoding seems not to be as important for spatial NP.…”

“…In other words, auditory spatial NP is eliminated when there is no mismatch between the stimulus features encoded at the repeated location (prime distractor, probe target). That is, feature mismatch is crucial for auditory spatial NP (Mayr et al, 2009;Mayr et al, 2014;Möller et al, 2013), yet it does not impact strongly on visuospatial NP Tipper, Weaver, & Milliken, 1995). Taken together, visuospatial NP has been shown first to reflect the aftereffects of the inhibition of previously activated responses, and second, is independent of feature mismatch.…”

“…Spatial NP has been demonstrated in vision (Chao, 2009;, audition (Mayr, Buchner, Möller, & Hauke, 2011;Mayr, Hauke, & Buchner, 2009;Mayr, Möller, & Buchner, 2014;Möller, Mayr, & Buchner, 2013), and touch (Frings et al, 2014). Interestingly, however, the available research indicates that the processes underlying spatial NP differ between these sensory modalities.…”

The negative priming paradigm: An update and implications for selective attention

“…It should be noted that for auditory location NP (Mayr, Hauke, & Buchner, 2009;Mayr, Buchner, Möller, & Hauke, 2011;Mayr, Möller, & Buchner, 2014) a pattern of results has been observed that diverges from the ones observed in vision (Milliken et al, 1994) or touch (Frings, Mast, & Spence, 2014). Spatial NP was found (i.e.…”

Editorial for special issue: “Auditory attention: merging paradigms and perspectives”

“…The latter aspect is further pursued in the empirical contribution by Mayr, Möller, and Buchner (2014). Mayr and colleagues investigate the mechanisms underlying auditory spatial negative priming.…”