The Effect of Age on Attentional Modulation in Dichotic Listening

Abstract

The right-ear advantage (REA) in Dichotic listening (DL) reflects stimulus-driven bottom-up asymmetry in speech processing. The REA can be modified by top-down attentional control. We investigated attentional control in DL task as a function of age. A total of 186 participants between the ages of 5 and 79 years were tested. The youngest children demonstrated a REA that was not modified by attention, suggesting that bottom-up functional asymmetry was present. The 10-11-year-olds began to show ability to voluntarily modify DL, but only young adults were fully capable of doing so. In 59-79-year-olds, this top-down attentional control was lost again.

Human aging compromises attentional control of auditory perception.

“…In contrast, in older adults, the laterality indices were practically indistinguishable across the different conditions of attentional focus (cf. Hugdahl et al, 2001;Takio et al, 2009); instead, older adults' performance was mainly driven by perceptual saliency, particularly in conditions when attentional focus and perceptual saliency favored opposing ears (see Figure 1, Panel B).…”

“…Relative to the neutral-focus condition (i.e., attending to both ears), directing attention to the right ear usually further accentuates the REA, whereas directing attention to the left ear tends to "nullify" the ear advantage or even reverse it to a left-ear advantage (LEA; e.g., Bryden, Munhall, & Allard, 1983;Hugdahl & Andersson, 1986). In studies that investigated age differences in the effects of attentional control on the REA, older adults showed less increase in the REA when asked to attend to the right ear and a reduced ability to attend to the left ear when compared with younger adults (e.g., Hugdahl et al, 2001;Takio et al, 2009). However, thus far, no study has examined how the REA may be affected by age differences in the interaction between perceptual saliency and attentional control.…”

“…Simple and forced-attention dichotic listening tasks have been used to study age effects on auditory attention (e.g., Drachman, Noffsinger, Sahakian, Kurdziel, & Fleming, 1980;Hugdahl, Carlsson, & Eichele, 2001;Takio et al, 2009;Strouse, Wilson, & Brush, 2000). In dichotic listening, two different auditory stimuli are presented simultaneously to the right and left ear.…”

Development of attentional control of verbal auditory perception from middle to late childhood: Comparisons to healthy aging.

“…In the neutral-focus condition, a reliable REA (i.e., a left-hemispheric superiority for speech processing) can already be observed in children aged 5 years (e.g., Berlin, Lowe-Bell, Hughes, & Berlin, 1973;Harper & Kraft, 1994;Westerhausen, Helland, Ofte, & Hugdahl, 2010). In the focused-attention conditions in contrast to older children (e.g., aged 10 -11 years), younger children are not able to flexibly exert their attentional control, and the REA is, thus, much less modulated as a function of attentional focus (e.g., Hugdahl, Carlsson, & Eichele, 2001;Takio et al, 2009).…”

“…Older adults' deficits in auditory processing relative to younger adults likely reflect effects of compromised sensory functions that are further augmented by agingrelated attentional deficits (e.g., Helfer & Freyman, 2008;Tun, O'Kane, & Wingfield, 2002). In contrast, agerelated improvements in dichotic listening performance from middle to late childhood are likely to primarily or exclusively reflect age-graded changes in attentional control (Hugdahl et al, 2001;Ridderinkhof et al, 1997;Rueda et al, 2004;Takio et al, 2009;Waszak et al, 2010), given that basic auditory mechanisms reach adultlike levels in early childhood (e.g., Stalinski et al, 2008;Trehub et al, 1988;Werner, 1996).…”