Can rhythm-induced attention improve the perceptual representation?

Abstract

Temporal attention can be entrained exogenously to rhythms. Indeed, faster and more accurate responses were previously found when the target appeared in-phase with a preceding rhythm in comparison to when it was out of phase. However, the nature of this rhythminduced attentional effect is not well understood. To better understand the processes underlying rhythm-induced attention, we employed a continuous measure of perceived orientation and a mixture-model analysis. A trial in our study started with a sequence of auditory beeps separated by a fixed inter-beeps interval in the regular (rhythmic) condition or by variable inter-beeps intervals in the irregular condition. A visual target-a line embedded in a circlefollowed the sequence. The 'critical' interval between the last beep and the target was chosen randomly from several possible Inter-Onset Intervals (IOIs), of which only one was inphase with the rhythm. The target was followed by a probe line, and the participants were asked to rotate it to reproduce the target's orientation. The measure of performance for a given trial was the difference in degrees between the orientation of the target and that reproduced by the observer. We found that guessing rate was lower with regular than irregular rhythms. However, there was no effect of rhythm type (regular vs irregular) on the quality of representation (measured as the variability in reproducing the target). Furthermore, the rhythm effect was present only when rhythm type was fixed within a block, and it was found with all IOIs, not just the in-phase IOI. This lack of specificity suggests that these results reflect a general effect of rhythm on alertness.

With No Attention Specifically Directed to It, Rhythmic Sound Does Not Automatically Facilitate Visual Task Performance

“…The effect was significant in the conditions having rhythm, but was considerable in all four (Figure 3H). In line with the findings of Elbaz and Yeshurun (2020), those that noticed the rhythmic support seemed to have a higher alertness overall and thus performed better. Their attention was mainly directed outwards to better select and integrate the modality-specific sensory input streams coming from the stimuli.…”

“…While the benefit of auditory support in a visual task is in line with a body of prior evidence such as the pip-and-pop experiment (Van der Burg et al, 2008), the effect of rhythm is less commonly described. A recent study by Elbaz and Yeshurun (2020) showed that induced rhythm does affect overall alertness but the accuracy of task performance does not depend on the synchronization between the rhythm and the moment of occurrence of the target. This absence of synchronization is similar to our findings.…”

Temporal attention

“…Furthermore, depending on the specific study, it is either presented as part of the rhythmic sequence (e.g., Lange, 2009;Rohenkohl et al, 2012) or at its end, with an additional variable foreperiod being interspersed between the rhythmic sequence and the imperative stimulus (e.g., Sanabria et al, 2011;Triviño et al, 2011;Deouell, 2014, 2017). In this type of paradigm, it has been shown that processing of stimuli presented in accordance with the rhythm is facilitated (e.g., Sanabria et al, 2011;Bolger et al, 2013; but see Elbaz and Yeshurun, 2020). Like temporal orienting paradigms, rhythmic temporal attention paradigms thus entail a comparison of conditions in which an imperative is either presented at an attended moment in time or at an unattended moment in time.…”

“…For instance, Miniussi et al (1999), who employed trial-by-trial cueing of the temporal onset of a visual target in a simple detection task, did not observe any effect of temporal attention on sensory ERPs such as the P1 and N1; instead, the earliest effect of temporal attention in that study was on the P300 and thus rather late within visual processing (see also Rudell and Hu, 2001;Hackley et al, 2007). Furthermore, several recent studies did not provide evidence for an effect of rhythmic temporal attention on perception (e.g., Elbaz and Yeshurun, 2020;Wilsch et al, 2020). For instance, Elbaz and Yeshurun (2020) asked participants to give a non-speeded judgment about the orientation of a masked visual target presented at the end of a rhythmic or arrhythmic auditory sequence.…”

“…Interestingly, some evidence that the effect of one attention domain can depend on how easy it can be processed and/or used relative to another domain has been observed for the comparison of spatial and feature-based attention in vision: Whereas it was originally argued that selective effects of feature-based attention arise later than those of spatial attention (e.g., Hillyard and Münte, 1984), more recent research has shown that featurebased attention can also precede or overcome effects of spatial attention, for instance in visual search tasks in which stimuli cannot be selected solely on grounds of location (e.g., Hopf et al, 2004;Seiss et al, 2009). Finally, and specifically with respect to rhythmic temporal attention, it has been suggested that specific methodological factors may play a role in observing a specific benefit for in-phase targets-such as the degree of temporal uncertainty or whether rhythm and target are of the same modality (see Elbaz and Yeshurun, 2020, for a discussion of these methodological factors). Hence, the lack of a temporal attention effect on measures of perceptual processing does not per se invalidate the view that temporal attention affects perception but rather indicates that effects of temporal attention may vary depending on the specific (task) context (see also Correa et al, 2005).…”