Inhibitory processes in auditory selective attention: Evidence of location-based and frequency-based inhibition of return

Abstract

The possibility that there is an inhibitory component to auditory covert orienting was addressed. Each trial consisted of a cue followedby a target, and listeners were required to detect, localize,or identify the frequency of the target. At 150-msecstimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), performance was best when stimuli sounded from the same location or were of the same frequency. However, at 750-msec SOA, performance was best when stimuli differed in location or were of different frequencies. These results document the existence of both location-basedand frequency-basedauditoryinhibitionof return.

Auditory attention to frequency and time: an analogy to visual local–global stimuli

“…For instance, Mondor and Bregman (1994) found that a valid frequency cue improved performance on a duration discrimination task for ISIs up to 1500 ms. A similar facilitation for validly cued frequencies has been reported for other orthogonal tasks, such as intensity discrimination (Mondor & Lacey, 2001;Ward, 1997;Ward & Mori, 1996) and rise-time discrimination (Mondor, Zatorre, & Terrio, 1998). Attention has also been given to determining the time course of this facilitation and under what circumstances it reverses to inhibition with longer ISIs (Mondor, Breau, & Milliken, 1998;Mondor, Hurlburt, & Gammell, 2003;Prime & Ward, 2002). …”

Reconceptualizing inhibition of return as

“…For example, Francis and Milliken (2003) described two forms of nonspatial IOR in vision based on stimulus length and color. Mondor, Breau, and Milliken (1998) found evidence for frequency-based auditory IOR. More recently, Morgan and Tipper (2007) have described a shape-specific version of IOR.…”

“…More recently, Morgan and Tipper (2007) have described a shape-specific version of IOR. Although these researchers did not refer to these effects as habituation, it is part of a trend of studies that have attempted to apply the concept of IOR to nonspatial dimensions (Grison, Paul, Kessler, & Tipper, 2005;Mondor & Breau, 1999;Mondor et al, 1998;Mondor & Lacey, 2001;Prime & Ward, 2002;Riggio, Patteri, & Umiltà, 2004). As I see it, there is an intuition growing among attention researchers that IOR represents a more general mechanism of attentional suppression.…”

Real Person Interaction in Visual Attention Research

“…IOR is also known to 'follow' objects as they move around the environment as well as being tagged to fixed spatial locations (Abrams & Dobkin, 1994;Tipper, Driver, & Weaver, 1991). Finally, it is crossmodal, having been shown to occur within and between the visual, auditory and tactile domains (Mondor, Breau, & Milliken, 1998;Poliakoff, Spence, O'Boyle, McGlone, & Cody, 2002).…”