1. Auditory ERP Attention Shifts Related to Task Difficulty and Gameplay
Rachel Mooney, Alysha Simmons, & Victoria Kazmerski
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
Abstract Method Results Discussion
Inattentional deafness refers to how our mind actively
ignores seemingly irrelevant auditory information. This
study examined the perception of unexpected auditory
stimuli while participants played either an easy or hard
version of a computer game. ERPs were recorded during
this task. Differences were noted in the P3s of the ERPs
between the easy and hard tasks. Increased awareness
of inattentional deafness might serve as a reminder to
pay closer attention to warning sounds.
• Attention is a subconscious strategy that is used to select
relevant information from all incoming sensory
information (Krishnan, Kang, Sperling, & Srinivasan,
2013).
(Image retrieved from Google Images)
• Attention is a limited commodity that is shared among all
senses (Sinnett, Costa, & Soto-Faraco, 2006).
• Many early studies on attention focused on either visual
inattention or auditory inattention.
• Since humans perceive stimuli from all senses at once,
multi-modal research needed to be done to increase the
external validity of attention research.
• The P3a and P3b components of the event-related
potential are elicited in an oddball paradigm. The P3a
can be elicited even when participants’ attention is
directed elsewhere. The P3b is thought to reflect
stimulus evaluation or categorization.
• Does P3 latency to an unattended auditory stimulus
increase when visual task difficulty increases?
• Does P3 amplitude to an unattended auditory stimulus
decrease when visual task difficulty increases?
• Does recognition of ignored tones vary based on task
difficulty of the incidental task?
Participants
25 College students: 12 Males, Mean Age: 20.76 years
Stimuli
Auditory stimuli. 250 tones
Rare: 650 Hz @ 90dB (10%)
Frequent: 350 Hz @ 75 dB (80%) tones
Novel: 25 sounds @ 90dB(10%) selected from the
Fabiani, Kazmerski, Cycowicz, & Friedman (1996)
database.
Game Played in Non-Attend Conditions. Participants
played a game called Piano Tiles (Zeng, 2014) on an iPad.
Normal Faster
Groups
Non-Attend Easy Condition: “Normal” level
Non-Attend Hard Condition: “Faster ” level
Attend Condition: Participants did not play a level of Piano
Tiles. They were instructed, instead, to press “1” on the
number pad whenever they heard the 650 Hz tone.
Recognition Task
- 1/2 of the stimuli occurred as novel sounds during the
original task
- 1/2 of the stimuli were new (retrieved from Fabiani et al.,
1996) Participants were instructed to press “1” if they
recognized the sound and “2” if they did not recognize
the sound.
Event-Related Potentials (ERPs)
- 64-channels using standard electrode placement
- Referenced to nose tip
- Recorded using Neuroscan 4.2 software
- 15-100 Hz bandpass filter
- 500 Hz digitization rate
This research was funded by grants from the Penn State Erie Office of
Undergraduate Research. The authors thank Dr. Victoria Kazmerski for her
guidance on this project. An additional thanks is extended to Hau Tuang and
Rebecca Misterovich for their assistance throughout the duration of this
experiment. This study was completed in part as a research requirement for
an undergraduate advanced research methods course at Penn State Erie.
- Analyze data collected from individual difference
measures:
- Background Questionnaire
- Laterality (Oldfield, 1971)
- Operational Span Task (Unsworth, 2005)
- Gaming Questionnaire (adapted from Connolly, et al., 2011)
- Collect game-play data to track participants’
concentration while playing the game
- As expected, P3a Amplitude differences are apparent
between the two non-attend conditions.
- Contrary to our hypothesis, the P3a amplitude was higher
for the Hard Condition rather than the Easy Condition.
This may reflect task differences that were not intentional,
e.g., failing and restarting the game.
- The means for the recognition task were not significant;
however, although this contradicts our hypothesis, the
means did showcase a trend that resemble the waveforms
pictured in Figure 1.
Connolly, T., Stansfield, M., & Hainey, T. (2011). An alternate reality game for
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Fabiani, M., Kazmerski, V., Cycowicz, Y., & Friedman, D. (1996). Naming norms
for brief environmental sounds: Effects of age and dementia,
Psychophysiology, 33, 462-475.
Krishnan, L., Kang, A., Sperling, G., & Srinivasan, R. (2013). Neural strategies
for selective attention distinguish fast-action video game players. Brain
Topography, 26, 83-97.
Memmert, D. (2006). The effects of eye movements, age, and expertise on
inattentional blindness. Consciousness and Cognition, 15, 620-627.
Oldfield, R. C. (1971). The assessment and analysis of handedness: The
Edinburg Inventory. Neuropsychologia, 9, 97-113.
Simons, D. J. (2010). Monkeying around with the gorillas in our midst:
Familiarity with inattentional-blindness task does not improve the
detection of unexpected events. i-Perception, 1, 3-6.
Sinnett, S., Costa, A., & Soto-Faraco, S. (2006). Manipulating inattentional
blindness within and across sensory modalities. The Quarterly Journal
of Experimental Psychology, 59(8), 1425-1442.
Unsworth, N., Heitz, R., Schrock, J., & Engle, R.(2005). An automated version
of the operation span task. Behavior Research Methods, 37(3), 498-
505.
Statistical comparisons were made between the ERPs for the
Easy and Hard Ignore conditions.
P3a Amplitude (175-250 ms)
- 3-way interaction for tone condition (Novel/Rare),
electrode site (FZ/CZ/PZ), and Condition (Easy/ Hard)
- F (2, 28) = 5.28, p < .05
P3b Amplitude: (251-375 ms)
- No significant task effects
Latency
- No significant task effects
Recognition
- No significant task effects
Future Directions
References
AcknowledgementsResearch Questions
Introduction
Figure 1. Grand average ERPs for the three auditory
conditions (frequent, novel, and rare) for each of the task
conditions.