Dimension-selective attention and dimensional salience modulate cortical tracking of acoustic dimensions

Auditory processing as perceptual, cognitive, and motoric abilities underlying successful second language acquisition: Interaction model.

“…Employing an analogous design, we measured the ability to attend to a single target acoustic dimension (i.e., dimension-selective attention) while ignoring a distractor dimension within a single sound stream. This dimension-selective attention paradigm involved a repetition detection task where participants are asked to attend to changes in one of the acoustic dimensions and report repetitions within the attended stream (Holt et al, 2018; Symons et al, 2021).…”

Tone language experience enhances dimension-selective attention and subcortical encoding but not cortical entrainment to pitch

“…Departing from traditional methods of measuring salience using behavioural ratings (Kaya & Elhiali, 2014), we measured dimensional salience with an EEG frequency tagging paradigm, in which different dimensions within a single sound stream changed at different rates. Recent research using this paradigm has shown that dimensional salience and dimension-selective attention modulate cortical tracking specifically at the rate tagged to that dimension (Costa-Faidella et al, 2017;Symons, Dick, & Tierney, 2021). Prior research has found that tone language speakers have enhanced early encoding of pitch, as measured using frequency-following responses (FFRs; Krishnan et al, 2010); however, the effects of tone language experience on cortical tracking of pitch in speech remain unclear.…”

“…To establish which of the presented dimensions (pitch vs duration) was more salient to participants while listening to speech and tone sequences, changes in each dimension were tagged to different presentation rates (2.5 or 1.67 Hz), with rate-to-dimension assignment counterbalanced across blocks . A stronger cortical tracking at any given frequency represents the salience of a given dimension changing at that rate (Symons, Dick, & Tierney, 2021). Additionally, we assessed subcortical pitch encoding across stimuli.…”

“…Prior to data analysis, we extracted data from the 9 channels with the maximum ITPC when averaged across the two rates of dimensional change (1.67 and 2 Hz) and all participants (N=114). The number of channels to include (i.e., 9) was decided prior to analysis following the standard pre-processing procedures (e.g., Symons et al, 2021). This resulted in a cluster of frontocentral channels (AF4, F3, Fz, F4, FC1, FC2, FC5, Cz, C3) across which the data were averaged.…”

Cortical tracking of spoken and written language structures in (dys)fluent readers

“…Since attending to a certain event can produce higher amplitudes and/or phase synchronizations of SSEP as compared to when that event is ignored (Joon Kim, Grabowecky, Paller, Muthu, & Suzuki, 2007;Müller, Teder-Sälejärvi, & Hillyard, 1998), frequency-tagged responses are also widely adopted to index the (dynamic) allocation of attention, which is otherwise difficult to assess behaviorally. This includes a battery of studies orienting the participants' attention to distinct stimulus attributes (Braddick, Birtles, Wattam-Bell, & Atkinson, 2005;Niesen et al, 2020;Symons, Dick, & Tierney, 2021), spatial locations (Ahveninen et al, 2011;Gray, Frey, Wilson, & Foxe, 2015;Keitel, Thut, & Gross, 2017), temporal sequences of varying size or onset (Ding et al, 2018;Farthouat, Atas, Wens, De Tiège, & Peigneux, 2018;Farthouat et al, 2017;Jin et al, 2018), and sensory input in different modalities (De Jong, Toffanin, & Harbers, 2010;Keitel, Maess, Schröger, & Müller, 2013). Therefore, SSEP may serve as a sensitive neural marker of fluctuations in covert attention during the incremental process of language tracking and learning.…”