Dissertation report

Student Number: 1311121
Page | 1
Auditory attention: The power of infant cries to distract
ABSTRACT
Past research has suggested that parental status may influence the degree to which people are
distracted by infant cries in a primary task, however this has not been directly tested in the area
of auditory attention. This study primarily aimed to measure the degree to which parents and
non-parents were distracted by infant cries and answer the question: does parental status
influence the degree to which people are distracted by infant cries in an auditory attention task?
A sustained auditory attention task was used to measure task performance; participants were
required to discriminate between high- and low-pitched tones, whilst being exposed to different
distractor sounds. A modified version of Wiensfield, Malatesta and Deloach’s (1981) ratings
questionnaire was used to measure participant’s reactions to each sound condition.
Demographics information was also collected from each participant. The results showed that
parents were significantly more distracted by infant cries than non-parents. Additionally,
parents rated the infant cries as significantly less pleasant, and that the more unpleasant
participants found the infant cries, the worse their task performance.
INTRODUCTION
Previous research has suggested that distractor sounds, i.e. sounds unrelated to the primary
task, can impair one’s performance in an auditory attention task (Hughes, 2014). Dalton and
Lavie (2004) also showed that task-irrelevant sounds have the ability to capture auditory
attention, which can lead to impaired performance in the primary task (Alain & Bernstein,
2008). More specifically, researchers have suggested that infant cries are particularly
distracting, even by comparison to other sounds that are similar in volume, pitch and frequency
(Morsbach, McCulloch & Clark, 1986). Boukydis and Lester (2012) suggested that this was
because adults perceive infant cries to be an attention-capturing stimulus, perhaps partially
driven by the physiological responses that have been found to occur upon hearing an infant cry
(Frodi, Lamb, Leavitt & Donovan, 1978). Boukydis and Burgess (1982) showed that when
adults listen to infant cries their heart rate and general arousal increases, which can evoke a
sense of urgency, concern and protectiveness (Otswald, 1963). However, other research has
shown that the severity of the reaction induced in response to infant cries depends upon the

Page | 2
salience of the cry sound to the individual listener (Weisenfeld & Klorman, 1978; Weisenfeld,
Malatesta & Deloach, 1981).
Some researchers have suggested that infant cries may be a more salient sound to parents than
non-parents, which makes it a more distracting and attention-capturing stimulus (Zeskind &
Lester, 1978). For young infants, crying is their principal tool for expressing and
communicating their needs, and therefore, it tends to evoke strong emotions in parents
(Boukydis & Lester, 2012; Sagi, 1981). Bell and Ainsworth (1972) found that parents have
greater sensitivity and pay more attention to infant cries to assess the needs of the child; this
finding was particularly prevalent in mothers. Giardino, Gonzalez, Steiner and Fleming (2008)
also showed that mothers experience heightened maternal responsiveness and increased
alertness to infant crying, compared to non-mothers. Stallings, Fleming, Corter, Worthman and
Steiner (2001) proposed that this difference could be driven by more extreme reactions in the
endocrine system, which controls emotional responses, and the greater experience with infants
that parents generally have (Fleming, Steiner & Corter, 1997). From this research, one could
argue that infant cries are a more significant stimulus for parents, than non-parents; Escera,
Yago, Corral, Corbera and Nuñez (2003) found that sounds that are particularly important or
salient to listeners are likely to be powerful in attracting attention, even if the listener is engaged
in another task.
Alternatively, some empirical evidence has shown that there is no difference in the degree to
which parents and non-parents are distracted by infant cries. As previously mentioned, the cry
is one of the most powerful distress signals an infant can offer (Ludington-Hoe, Cong &
Hashemi, 2002). Infant cries are particularly attention-capturing and irritating to listeners
because they are an octave off any other naturally occurring sound; this is designed to elicit a
caregiving response from surrounding adults as they want soothe the child to stop the noise
(Coriwn, Lester & Golub, 1996). Green, Jones and Gustafson (1987) proposed that adult
responses to infant cries resemble instinctive reactions that are stereotyped and appear not to
be the product of training. Other evolutionary psychologists have supported this view and
suggest that adults monitor cues to survival when they listen to infant cries, regardless of their
parental status (Thompson, Olson & Dessureau, 1986). Therefore, one may expect all adults to
be distracted by infant cries to the same extent (Boukydis & Lester, 2012).
In addition, culturally and evolutionarily women are expected to be more involved and deliver
more childcare compared to men (Moon & Hoffman, 2008). This is mainly because infants are

Page | 3
nourished by their mothers’ milk, so it makes sense for most early caring to be done by females,
while the males predominantly engaged in procuring food and defending their families (Buss
& Kenrick, 1998; Geary & Bjorklund, 2000; Wood & Eagly, 2002). Possibly as a result of this,
women tend to experience greater physiological arousal (Zeskind, 1980) and increased brain
activity (Seifritz et al., 2003) upon hearing infant cries. Lorberbaum et al. (1999) found that
the sound of an infant crying activates the anterior cingulate area of a woman’s brain, which is
responsible for conscious experience. This suggests that women have a greater awareness of
infant cries (Allman, Hakeem, Erwin, Nimchinsky & Hof, 2001), which could make the sound
more distracting to women than men. Seifritz et al. (2003) also showed that when listening to
the cry of unfamiliar infants, females showed greater prefrontal activation in the brain
compared to males. The prefrontal cortex is partly responsible for attention control (Knight,
Grabowecky & Scabini, 1995), so this greater activation in females could suggest that they
give more attention to the infant cries than males. Furthermore, De Pisapia et al. (2013) showed
that women experience decreased activity in their dorsal medial prefrontal and posterior
cingulate areas when exposed to infant cries, compared to men; these areas are known to be
involved in mind wandering (Northoff, & Bermpohl, 2004). This suggests that women
subconsciously interrupt their mind wandering and attend to the infant cries, while men
continue to mind wander without disruption (De Pisapia et al., 2013); again, this could indicate
that women are more distracted by infant cries than men. However, it is important to note that
participants in De Pisapia et al.’s (2013) study were only listening to hunger cries, so it is
unclear whether the same results would apply to all infant cries.
Our primary research question is: does parental status influence the degree to which people
are distracted by infant cries in an auditory attention task? For instance, are parents more
distracted by infant cries than non-parents? To investigate this, we will partially replicate a
study conducted by Chang and Thompson (2011). In this study, the researchers investigated
the degree to which parents and non-parents were distracted by infant cries when engaging in
a problem-solving task. The children of the parent participants were aged between four months
and four years. Participants completed simple subtraction problems for one minute per sound
condition; performance was measured by the number of completed problems. The sound
conditions included an infant cry, machine noise and silence; the machine noise represented a
sound that was similar in pitch and frequency to the infant cry, and therefore, acted as a control
sound. Chang and Thompson (2011) found that participants completed fewer problems when

Page | 4
listening to the infant cry than silence, but not machine noise. They found no differences in
number of problems completed between males and females, or parents and non-parents. We
will replicate their use of a machine noise as an emotionally-neutral sound similar in pitch and
frequency to the infant cries. We will also replicate their use of a silent condition to measure
baseline performance of participants in the primary task. However, we will make some key
changes. Instead of using a problem-solving task, we will ask participants to complete a
sustained auditory attention task, where they must discriminate between high- and low-pitched
tones. As far as we are aware, auditory attention has not been directly tested before in exploring
the impact of infant cries on performance, thus there is a gap in the literature. Additionally, we
intend to use parents with older children, as well as those with children under the age of four;
it will be interesting to see whether the time since there was a crying infant in living the house
influences the degree to which parents are distracted by infant cries. We chose this area of
research largely due to the conflict in the literature, as discussed earlier, and because auditory
attention is relatively investigated in this context.
From the current literature, we predict a number of hypotheses; (1) Performance will decrease
in conditions where there is an auditory distractor. The evidence for this hypothesis comes
primarily from auditory attention research, such as that conducted by Hughes (2014), and
Dalton and Lavie (2004); evidence suggests that when distractor sounds are present,
performance in the focal auditory attention task is impaired, compared to when distractor
sounds are not present. Second, (2) Women will perform worse than men in the infant cry
condition. A wealth of empirical evidence suggests that infant cries are a more attention-
capturing stimuli to women compared to men (De Pisapia et al., 2013), due to the differences
in brain activity experienced. More specifically, research suggests that brain areas responsible
for awareness and attention are more active in women when the cries are heard (Lorberbaum
et al., 1999; Seifritz et al., 2003). We also predict that (3) There may be a difference in
performance between parents and non-parents in the infant cry condition, but because of mixed
evidence we are unsure of the direction.
METHOD
Participants
Participants were 12 non-parent volunteers (5 female, 7 male) and 11 parent volunteers (5
female, 6 male) from the Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire areas. The participants

Page | 5
were aged 18-52 years old, with an overall mean age of 31. The mean age of the non-parents
was 26 years and the mean age of the parents was 36 years. The children of the parent
participants were aged between 3 months and 21 years of age. None of the participants reported
having any known hearing difficulties.
Materials and Apparatus
One questionnaire, one demographics form and a sustained auditory attention task was used
in this study. A modified version of Wiensfield, Malatesta and Deloach’s (1981) ratings
questionnaire was used to measure participant’s reactions to each sound condition, i.e. silence,
machine and infant cry. The questionnaire contained eight questions, asking to rate all of the
sound conditions for their overall pleasantness (1 = very pleasant; 10 = very unpleasant),
tension experienced (1 = extremely relaxed; 10 = tense as I've ever been) and novelty (1 =
extremely ordinary; 10 = extremely unusual) on a 10-point scale. The only exception was that
participants were not asked to rate the silence condition for its novelty. The demographics form
was used to gather information about the participant’s age, gender, parental status and age of
their youngest child (if applicable). For the ratings questionnaire and demographics form, see
appendix A.
The auditory attention task was used to measure task performance by recording (a) reaction
time, (b) hits, and (c) false alarms. The auditory attention task was created using Matlab and
consisted of a series of 600Hz (low-pitched) and 1000Hz (high-pitched) tones that had a
duration of 200ms, with 5ms onset/offset ramps. For all participants, the task was presented on
a laptop over Sennheiser HD201 headphones, and took place in a quiet room away from other
auditory distractions.
Design
Parental status was a between-subjects, independent variable and had two levels: (a) parents
and, (b) non-parents. Gender was a between-subjects, independent variable and had two levels:
(a) male and, (b) female. Sound condition was a within-subjects, independent variable and had
three levels: (a) silence, where no distractor sounds are present, (b) machine, where a machine
noise is the distractor sound, and (c) infant cry, where an infant crying is the distractor sound.
In the machine and infant cry conditions, the participants are required to ignore the distractor
sound whilst completing the sustained auditory attention task. Performance in the auditory
attention task is a dependent variable, and was measured in three ways: (a) reaction time, so

Page | 6
how quickly the participant correctly identified a target, (b) hits, so how accurate the participant
was in identifying a target and, (c) false alarms, how many times the participant incorrectly
identified a distractor tone as a target. The ratings from the questionnaire measuring
pleasantness, tension experienced and novelty to each sound condition was also a dependent
variable. Parental status, gender and sound condition are categorical variables; task
performance and questionnaire ratings are continuous variables.
Procedure
Participants were told that they needed to identify the target tones (either high- or low-pitched
depending on their task variation) as quickly and accurately as possible, ignoring all other
distracting sounds. They were informed that they could end the task whenever they liked
without any repercussions. First, the participants completed a practice run to allow them to
become familiar with the task and their target tone. The practise task consisted of two blocks
where there were no distractor sounds present.
The participants then continued onto the main task. In total, there were six blocks in the main
task; two for each sound condition with the task being presented to alternate ears. The order of
the blocks were counterbalanced (for the counterbalancing table, see appendix B). Participants
were required to discriminate between the high- and low-pitched tones. The tones were
presented as a continuous random sequence to each subject and the tones had an interstimulus
interval of 1.8, 1.9 or 2 seconds, which was also in a random sequence. This variation in timing
prevented anticipatory responses. Each trial was about 140 seconds in length. The target tones
were either high- or low-pitched, depending on the participant’s number (for half high-pitched
tones were the target, the other half low-pitched tones were the target). There was one target to
three distractors, a total of 15 targets to 45 distractor tones in each trial. The participants had to
press the spacebar as quickly and accurately as possible upon hearing a target. The auditory
attention task was presented to one ear and the distractor sound (silence, machine or infant cry)
presented to the other ear; this was a dichotic listening task. The infant cry and machine sounds
were sourced from a free online sound library (www.freesound.org/); the two machine sounds
chosen were a jackhammer and a dremel as the sound was not a constant volume or intensity,
thus they were similar in structure to the infant cries.
There were blank screens in-between the trials that allowed the task to be self-paced; in other
words, the participants could choose to have a break between the trials if they liked. After

Page | 7
participants had completed the main task, they were asked to complete the ratings
questionnaire. At the end, all participants were debriefed verbally and given a chance to ask
questions.
RESULTS
The data was normally distributed and Mauchly's Test of Sphericity indicated that the
assumption of sphericity had not been violated, χ2(2) = 1.10, p = .58.
Core analysis
Three 2 x 2 x 3 mixed, factorial ANOVA (Parental status [parent, non-parent] x Gender [male,
female] x (Sound condition [silence, machine, infant cry]) were conducted to see whether there
were any significant interactions or main effects of parental status, gender and/ or sound
condition on task performance.
For reaction time, the factorial ANOVA showed there was a significant main effect of sound
condition, F(2, 38) = 6.15, p < .05. A post-hoc LSD test showed a significant difference
between the infant cry and machine conditions, and infant cry and silence conditions; in that
the participants were significantly slower in the infant cry condition. The ANOVA also showed
a significant interaction between sound condition and parental status, F(2, 38) = 6.93, p < .05.
A post-hoc one-way ANOVA showed a significant effect of sound condition for parents, F(2,
20) = 6.70, p <.05; in that parents were significantly slower in the infant cry condition,
compared to the silence condition. The post-hoc ANOVA showed no effect of sound condition
for non-parents, F(2, 22) = .17, p >.05. (for descriptive statistics, see table 1). See figure 1, for
a line graph of the significant interaction and main effect for the factorial ANOVA. However,
there was no interaction between gender and noise, F(2, 38) = .79, p>.05, and no three-way
interaction between noise, gender and parental status, F(2, 38) = 1.45, p>.05. There was also
no significant difference between the machine and silence conditions.
For hits, the factorial ANOVA showed no significant main effect of sound condition, F(2, 38)
= 2.73, p > .05. There was also no interaction between sound condition and gender, F(2, 38) =
1.67, p > .05; sound condition and parental status, F(2, 38) = .43, p > .05; and no three-way
interaction between gender, sound condition and parental status F(2, 38) = 1.12, p > .05. For
false alarms, the factorial ANOVA showed no significant main effect of sound condition, F(2,
38) = .37, p > .05. There was also no interaction between sound condition and gender, F(2, 38)

Page | 8
= .32 p > .05; sound condition and parental status, F(2, 38) = 1.61, p > .05; and no three-way
interaction between gender, sound condition and parental status F(2, 38) = .90, p > .05.
Table 1: Reaction time means (and standard deviations) for parental status and sound condition.
Parents
Sound condition Mean reaction Time (s)
Infant cry .59 (.10)
Machine .52 (.09)
Silence .49 (.08)
Infant cry .48 (.05)
Machine .48 (.06)
Silence .48 (.07)
Figure 1: Main effect of sound condition, and interaction between sound condition and parental status
From this point on in our results, we chose only to use reaction time as a measure for task
performance, as it was the only data that we found significant results for in the factorial
ANOVA.
Secondary analyses
Parents with young vs. old children

Page | 9
A median split was conducted to compare the task performance of parents with younger
children to parents with older children. We split the data by age of youngest child (median age
= 10 years) as this was the fairest split of the data. The median split showed there was no
significant difference in performance between parents with older children and parents with
younger children, t(9) = .49, p > .05.
Ratings of the sound conditions
Several independent measures t-tests were conducted to see whether parental status influenced
how the participants rated the infant cries and machine noises for pleasantness, tension
experienced and novelty.
For unpleasantness, the t-test showed a significant difference in how pleasant parents and non-
parents rated the infant cries, in that parents rated the infant cries as significantly less pleasant
than non-parents, t(21) = 3.58, p > .05. We then correlated the difference in reaction times
between the infant cry and silence conditions with pleasantness ratings. This was to see whether
the pleasantness ratings influenced participant’s performance in the auditory attention task. The
Pearson’s correlation showed that there was a significant relationship between pleasantness
and task performance, in that the more unpleasant participants found the infant cries, the slower
they responded to the target tones, r(23) = .47, p <.05.
For novelty, the t-test showed a significant difference in how novel parents and non-parents
rated the infant cries, in that parents rated the infant cries as significantly less novel than non-
parents, t(21) = -3.31, p > .05. However, the Pearson’s correlation showed that the novelty
ratings did not significantly influence performance in the auditory attention task, r(23) = -.41,
p <.05.
For tension experienced, the t-test showed there was no significant difference in how tense
parents and non-parents felt during the infant cry conditions, t(21) = 1.32, p > .05. The
Pearson’s correlation also showed that tension ratings did not significantly influence
performance in the auditory attention task, r(23) = .31, p >.05.
Additionally, the t-tests showed there was no significant difference in how the participants
rated the machine noises for pleasantness, tension experienced and novelty: t(21) = 1.08, p >

Page | 10
.05; t (21) = 1.11, p > .05; , t(21) = 1.52, p > .05, respectively (for descriptive statistics, see
table 2).
Table 2: Means (and standard deviations) for unpleasantness, tension experienced and novelty ratings
given by parents and non-parents.
Parents
Sound condition Mean unpleasantness rating Mean tension rating Mean novelty rating
Infant cry 8.45 (1.51) 6.90 (2.02) 3.09 (1.97)
Machine 6.36 (1.43) 5.18 (2.04) 6.09 (2.91)
Non-parents
Infant cry 6.00 (1.76) 5.67 (2.46) 5.92 (2.11)
Machine 5.50 (2.28) 4.08 (2.64) 4.42 (2.35)
Performance and age
As there was a ten year difference in the mean age of the parents and non-parents, we
correlated the difference in reaction times between the infant cry and silence conditions to see
whether age influenced task performance. The Pearson’s correlation showed there was no
significant relationship between age and the difference in reactions times between the infant
cry and silence conditions, r(23) = -.12, p>.05.
DISCUSSION
The results of the study showed that participants were significantly slower in the infant cry
condition, compared to the machine and silence conditions. We also found that parents were
significantly slower in the infant cry condition compared the silence condition. However, there
was no interaction between gender and noise, and no three-way interaction between noise,
gender and parental status. There was no significant difference between the machine and
silence conditions. Analysis also showed there was no significant difference in performance
between parents with older children and parents with younger children.
Furthermore, we found that parents rated the infant cries as significantly less pleasant than
non-parents, and that the more unpleasant participants found the infant cries, the slower they
responded to the target tones. Parents also rated the infant cries as significantly less novel than
non-parents however, there was no significant relationship between novelty and task

Page | 11
performance. Additionally, there was no significant difference in how tense parents and non-
parents felt during the infant cry conditions. There was no significant difference in how the
participants rated the machine noises for pleasantness, tension experienced and novelty.
The data supported only partially supported our first hypothesis, that people perform worse
in an auditory attention task when there is an auditory distractor present. Our data only showed
that participants were significantly slower in the infant cry condition compared to silence, and
not the machine condition. However, this is consistent with the results of Chang and Thompson
(2011) study who found that participants task performance was worse when listening to the
infant cry than silence, but not machine noise. This finding suggests that there is something
inherently distracting about infant cries, perhaps due to the fact that they are a whole octave
off any other naturally occurring sound (Corwin, Lester & Golub, 1996). Other research
suggests that it could be because infant cries are a far more emotionally salient stimulus in
comparison to other sounds similar in pitch and frequency, such as a machine noise (Morsbach,
McCulloch, and Clark, 1986).
The data did not support our second hypothesis that women would perform worse in the infant
cry condition than men. Instead we found no significant performance differences in the infant
cry condition between males and females. Chang and Thompson (2011) also found that there
were no performance differences based on gender when participants were exposed to infant
cries. While previous research has shown that females experience greater physiological arousal
when listening to infant cries, possibly because evolutionarily women are the primary
caregivers, and therefore, would be expected to respond to infant cries more often than men
(Kenrick & Luce, 2000), this did not appear influence their ability to focus in an auditory
attention task. In parents, this could be explained by the general increase in undertaking of
childcare duties by fathers driven by social changes, such as more women becoming the
primary breadwinners in the family (Grbich, 1994), and the development of formula milk,
which means that women are no longer the only sex that can feed young infants. Abraham et
al. (2014) showed that the human brain is flexible to such changes as they found that the degree
of emotional and thinking responses displayed by fathers differed according to how much time
they spent looking after the child. Therefore, it could be argued that because fathers, in general,
are becoming more involved in their children’s upbringing infant cries are just as salient to
them as they are to mothers. However, this would not explain why there are no sex differences
in responses to infant cries in non-parents.

Page | 12
For hypothesis 3, analysis showed that parents are more distracted by infant cries than non-
parents; while this differs from Chang and Thompson’s (2011) results who did not find any
differences in the task performance between parents and non-parents, this finding is consistent
with the findings of several studies looking at the distractibility of infant cries in visual
attention, problem-solving, and concentration tasks (e.g. Hechler, Beijers & de Weerth, 2015;
Morsbach, McCulloch, and Clark, 1986). From the current literature, there may be two possible
explanations for this finding. First, that infant cries are a more salient and significant stimuli
for parents, which means that their attention is involuntarily drawn to it more than non-parents
(Escera, Yago, Corral, Corbera, & Nuñez, 2003). Studies have shown that P3a, also known as
novelty-P3, amplitude increases depending on the salience of the stimuli (Yago, Corral &
Escera, 2001); the more salient the sound, the greater the P3a amplitude (Escera, Alho, Winkler
& Näätänen, 1998). P3a has been associated with brain activity related to the engagement or
involuntary shift of attention (Friedman, Cycowicz & Gaeta, 2001), therefore, if the P3a
amplitude was greater in response to a sound, one would expect the individual to be more
distracted by it and their performance in a primary task to be worse. These findings are also in
agreement with the seminal observations of Moray (1959) and Treisman (1960) who
investigated the ‘breakthrough of the unattended’; this is when an auditory stimuli captures
attention in a dichotic listening task, even if it irrelevant to the task at hand (Styles, 2006). The
second explanation could be that parents had a greater emotional response to the infant cries
that meant they were more distracted by them. Research has suggested that emotional reactions
and cognitive disturbances in response to infant cries may be complementary, and that these
two processes may share the same underlying mechanism (Bodenhausen, Sheppard, & Kramer,
1994). This is supported by our finding that parents rated infant cries as more unpleasant, and
the more unpleasant participants rated the infant cries, the slower their task performance.
Furthermore, this is a result that is consistent with what Hechler, Beijers and de Weerth (2015)
found; the more negative emotions the participant felt, the worse their cognitive performance.
As previously discussed, we chose to use an auditory attention task, rather than a working
memory task, such as the maths problems used in Chang and Thompson’s (2011) study,
because this is an area of attention that has not been explored in this context. We would expect
to see some differences in results between our auditory attention task and a working memory
task because participants have to pay attention to the auditory task all the time to be successful,
however, it may be easier for them to drift in and out of attention during the working memory
task as they may be less worried about failing (Awh, Vogel & Oh, 2006). Therefore, one could

Page | 13
argue that participants may be more distracted in a working memory task as it is less important
for them to stay focused on the task for the whole of the experiment, whereas, in our auditory
attention task if they lost focus, even momentarily, they may miss a target tone.
While it could be argued that our study adequately tested our hypotheses, there are some
improvements that could be made if the study were to be conducted again in the future. For
instance, researchers could use a more direct measure of stimulus saliency and emotional
valence to help clarify which out of the two explanations discussed above is the most
appropriate one for explaining why parents are more distracted by infant cries. This would
allow researchers to answer the question: are parents more distracted by infant cries because
they find them more salient or because they have a greater emotional response to them? As
previously mentioned, research has shown that P3a amplitude can be elicited by non-task-
related, attention-capturing stimuli, particularly sounds that are salient to the listener (Fischer,
Dailler & Morlet, 2008; Friedman, Cycowicz & Dziobek, 2003). P3a is associated with the
reorientation of attention from a primary task to a non-task-related stimuli; the greater the
saliency of the sound, the greater the P3a amplitude (Combs & Polich, 2006). Reorienting
negativity (RON) then follows as attention is reoriented back towards the main task (Escera &
Corral, 2007). Therefore, an electroencephalograph (ECG) could be used to measure the size
and frequency of P3a amplitudes elicited in response to the distractor sounds, and how quickly
attention is reoriented back to the auditory attention task. This would be a more direct measure
of sound saliency (Yago, Corral & Escera, 2001). Galvanic skin response (GSR), an indicator
of skin conductance, could be used as a direct measure of emotional arousal; the greater an
individual’s GSR to a sound, the greater their level of emotional arousal (Nakasone, Prendinger
& Ishizuka, 2005). Khalfa, Isabelle, Jean-Pierre and Manon (2002) showed that music could
induce varying SCRs according to how emotionally aroused participants were.
In addition, the participants in the parent and non-parent group could be better age matched
as there is an average 10 year age gap between the groups. Research has shown that older
people are likely to perform worse in auditory attention tasks compared to younger people.
Hasher and Zacks (1988) proposed that inhibitory aspects of attention are affected by cognitive
ageing, and that it plays an important role in focusing attention on relevant tasks (Cohen-
Bendahan, van Doornen & de Weerth, 2014; Logan, 1985; McDowd and Shaw, 2000; Posner,
1987). Thus, a person with impaired inhibitory functioning will show greater distractibility
(Hasher & Zacks, 1988). This suggests that when older people are exposed to distractor sounds,
their performance will be more impaired than younger people, as they are less able to filter

Page | 14
irrelevant items (Tisserand & Jolles, 2003). However, in our analyses we did not find age to
significantly influence performance in the auditory attention task.
Finally, we could have conducted the auditory attention task in a darkened room to reduce
visual input (Cassel & Dallenbach, 1918). Kahneman (1973) proposed that there is just one
attentional resource system for all modalities, with subsequent research suggesting there is a
deep linkage between the brain systems that control visual attention and those that control
auditory attention (Dell’Acqua & Jolicoeur, 2000; Jolicoeur, 1999). Therefore, if the
participant’s eyes were focused on looking at something in the room or something occurred to
capture their visual attention, it is possible this could have diverted attentional resources away
from the auditory task (Navon & Gopher, 1979). Completing the task in a darkened room would
reduce the likelihood of visual interference.
An area for further research could be to investigate whether our findings would be replicated
in collectivist or tribal societies where there is more alloparenting. Alloparenting is care for
offspring by someone other than the parents (Burkhart, Hrdy, & van Schaik, 2009). It would
be interesting to explore whether people who do not have children themselves, respond in the
same way as biological parents in cultures where there is greater parenting by all adults. For
example, among the Habakushu tribe of Botswana the boys and girls are raised in separate
villages. In these single-sex villages, the boys refer to all the men as ‘father’ and the girls refer
to all the women as ‘mother’ because they collectively raise the children (Fine & Lee, 2000).
In such communities, parents and child-rearing practices are very different to those in the
Western world, and it is possible that alloparenting may result in all adults regarding infant
cries as equally salient because they are jointly responsible for the infant’s childcare (Meehan,
2009).
While we did find several significant results, our research design and area is relatively novel.
As previously discussed, to our knowledge auditory attention has not been directly tested
before in exploring the impact of infant cries on performance. Therefore, due to the lack of
exploration of the impact of infant cries on performance in an auditory attention task, we would
suggest that further research needs to be conducted to test whether our significant results would
be replicated if the study was repeated under the same conditions.

Page | 15
REFERENCES
Abraham, E.,Hendler, T.,Shapira-Lichter, I., Kanat-Maymon, Y.,Zagoory-Sharon, O.,& Feldman, R.
(2014). Father's brain is sensitive to childcare experiences. Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 111(27), 9792-9797.
Alain, C.,& Bernstein,L. J.(2008). From sounds to meaning: the role of attention during auditory scene
analysis. Current Opinion in Otolaryngology & Head and Neck Surgery, 16(5), 485-489.
Allman, J. M., Hakeem, A., Erwin, J. M., Nimchinsky, E., & Hof, P. (2001). The anterior cingulate
cortex. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 935(1), 107-117.
Awh, E., Vogel, E. K., & Oh, S. H. (2006). Interactions between attention and working memory.
Neuroscience, 139(1), 201-208.
Bell, S. M., & Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1972). Infant crying and maternal responsiveness. Child
development, 1171-1190.
Bodenhausen, G. V., Sheppard, L. A., & Kramer, G. P. (1994). Negative affect and social judgment:
The differential impact of anger and sadness. European Journal of social psychology,24(1),
45-62.
Boukydis, C. Z., & Lester, B. M. (Eds.). (2012). Infant crying:Theoretical and research perspectives.
New York, NY: Springer Science & Business Media.
Burkart, J. M., Hrdy, S. B., & Van Schaik, C. P. (2009). Cooperative breeding and human cognitive
evolution. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 18(5), 175-186.
Buss, D. M., & Kenrick, D. T. (1998). Evolutionary social psychology (4th ed.). New York, NY:
McGraw-Hill.
Cassel,E. E., & Dallenbach, K. M. (1918). The effect of auditory distraction upon the sensory reaction.
The American Journal of Psychology, 29(2), 129-143.
Chang, R. S., & Thompson, N. S. (2010). The attention-getting capacity of whines and child-directed
speech. Evolutionary Psychology, 8(2), 260-274.
Chang, R. S., & Thompson, N. S. (2011). Whines, cries, and motherese: Their relative power to
distract. Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology, 5(2), 131.
Cohen-Bendahan, C. C. C., van Doornen, L. J. P., & de Weerth, C. (2014). Young adults’ reactions to
infant crying. Infant Behavior and Development,37(1), 33-43.
Combs, L. A., & Polich, J. (2006). P3a from auditory white noise stimuli. Clinical
Neurophysiology, 117(5), 1106-1112.
Corwin, M. J., Lester, B. M., & Golub, H. L. (1996). The infant cry: what can it tell us?. Current
Problems in Pediatrics, 26(9), 313-334.
Dalton, P., & Lavie, N. (2004). Auditory attentional capture: effects of singleton distractor sounds.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 30(1), 180.
De Pisapia, N., Bornstein, M. H., Rigo, P., Esposito, G., De Falco, S., & Venuti, P. (2013). Gender
Differences in Directional Brain Responses to Infant Hunger Cries. Neuroreport, 24(3), 142.

Page | 16
Dell’acqua, R., & Joucoeur, P. (2000). Visual encoding of patterns is subject to dual-task interference.
Memory & cognition, 28(2), 184-191.
Escera,C., Alho, K., Winkler, I., & Näätänen,R. (1998). Neural mechanisms of involuntary attention
to acoustic novelty and change. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 10(5), 590-604.
Escera,C., Yago, E., Corral, M. J., Corbera, S., & Nuñez, M. I. (2003). Attention capture by auditory
significant stimuli: semantic analysis follows attention switching. European Journal of
Neuroscience, 18(8), 2408-2412.
Fine, M. J.,& Lee,S. W.(Eds.).(2000). Handbookof diversity in parenteducation: The changing faces
of parenting and parent education. Academic Press.
Fischer, C.,Dailler, F., & Morlet, D.(2008). Novelty P3 elicited by the subject’s own name in comatose
patients. Clinical neurophysiology, 119(10), 2224-2230.
Friedman, D., Cycowicz, Y. M., & Gaeta, H. (2001). The novelty P3: an event-related brain potential
(ERP) sign of the brain's evaluation of novelty.Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews,25(4),
355-373.
Fleming, A. S., Steiner, M., & Corter, C. (1997). Cortisol, hedonics, and maternal responsiveness in
human mothers. Hormones and Behavior, 32(2), 85-98.
Frodi, A. M., Lamb, M. E., Leavitt, L. A., & Donovan, W. L. (1978). Fathers' and mothers' responses
to infant smiles and cries. Infant Behavior and Development, 1, 187-198.
Geary, D. C., & Bjorklund, D. F. (2000). Evolutionary developmental psychology. Child
development, 71(1), 57-65.
Giardino, J., Gonzalez, A., Steiner, M., & Fleming, A. S. (2008). Effects of motherhood on
physiological and subjective responses to infant cries in teenage mothers: A comparison with
non-mothers and adult mothers. Hormones and Behavior, 53(1), 149-158.
Green, J. A., Jones, L. E., & Gustafson, G. E. (1987). Perception of cries by parents and nonparents:
Relation to cry acoustics. Developmental Psychology, 23(3), 370.
Grbich, C. (1994). Women as primary breadwinners in families where men are primary
caregivers. Journal of Sociology, 30(2), 105-118.
Hasher, L., & Zacks, R. (1988). Working memory, comprehension, and aging. A review and a new
view. In: Bower GH, editor. The psychology of learning and motivation, p. 193–225. New
York: Academic Press.
Hechler, C., Beijers, R., & de Weerth, C. (2015). Young adults’ reactions to infant crying. Infant
Behavior and Development, 38, 41-48.
Hughes, R. W. (2014). Auditory distraction: A duplex‐mechanism account. PsyCh Journal, 3(1),30-
41.
Jolicoeur, P. (1999). Dual-task interference and visual encoding. Journal of Experimental psychology:
Human perception and performance, 25(3), 596.
Kahneman, D. (1973). Attention and effort. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Page | 17
Kenrick, D. T., & Luce, C. L. (2000). An evolutionary life-history model of gender differences and
similarities. The developmental social psychology of gender, 35-63.
Khalfa, S., Isabelle, P.,Jean-Pierre,B.,& Manon, R. (2002). Event-related skin conductance responses
to musical emotions in humans. Neuroscience letters, 328(2), 145-149.
Knight, R. T., Grabowecky, M. F., & Scabini, D. (1995). Role of human prefrontal cortex in attention
control. Advances in neurology,66,21-36.
Logan, G. D. (1985). Executive control of thought and action. Acta Psychologica,60(2-3),193-210.
Lorberbaum, J. P.,Newman,J. D.,Dubno, J. R.,Horwitz, A. R.,Nahas,Z., Teneback, C. C., Bloomer,
C. W., Bohning, D. E., Vincent, D., Johnson, M. R., Emmanuel, N., Brawman-Mintzer, O.,
Book, S. W., Lydiard, R. B., Ballenger, J. C., & George, M. S. (1999). Feasibility of using
fMRI to study mothers responding to infant cries. Depression and anxiety, 10(3), 99-104.
Ludington-Hoe, S., Cong, X., & Hashemi, F. (2002). Infant crying: nature, physiologic consequences,
and select interventions. Neonatal Network, 21(2), 29-36.
McDowd, J. M., & Shaw, R. J. (2000). Attention and aging: a functional perspective. In: Craik FI,
Salthouse TA, editors. The handbook of aging and cognition (2nd ed),p. 221–92. New Jersey,
NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Meehan, C. L. (2009). Maternal time allocation in two cooperative childrearing societies. Human
Nature, 20(4), 375-393.
Moon, M., & Hoffman, C. D. (2008). Mothers' and fathers' differential expectancies and behaviors:
Parent x child gender effects. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 169(3), 261-280.
Moray, N. (1959). Attention in dichotic listening: Affective cues and the influence of instructions.
Quarterly journal of experimental psychology, 11(1), 56-60.
Morsbach, G., McCulloch, M., & Clark, A. (1986). Infant crying as a potential stressor concerning
mothers’ concentration ability. Psychologia: An International Journal of Psychology in the
Orient, 29(1), 18-20.
Nakasone,A.,Prendinger, H.,& Ishizuka, M. (2005). Emotion recognition from electromyography and
skin conductance. In Proc. of the 5th International Workshop on Biosignal Interpretation (pp.
219-222).
Navon, D., & Gopher, D. (1979). On the economy of the human-processing system. Psychological
review, 86(3), 214.
Northoff, G., & Bermpohl, F. (2004). Cortical midline structures and the self. Trends in cognitive
sciences, 8(3), 102-107.
Ostwald, P. F. (1963). Soundmaking:the acoustic communication of emotion. Illinois, IL: Charles C
Thomas.
Parmentier, F. B. (2008). Towards a cognitive model of distraction by auditory novelty: The role of
involuntary attention capture and semantic processing. Cognition,109(3),345-362.

Page | 18
Posner, M. I. (1987). Structures and functions of selective attention. Paper presented at the Annual
Meeting of the American Psychological Association, New York, NY.
Sagi, A. (1981). Mothers' and non-mothers' identification of infant cries. Infant behavior and
development, 4, 37-40.
Seifritz, E., Esposito, F., Neuhoff, J. G., Lüthi, A., Mustovic, H., Dammann, G., von Bardeleben, U.,
Radue., E. W., Cirillo, S., Tedeschi, G., & Di Salle, F. (2003). Differential sex-independent
amygdala response to infant crying and laughing in parents versus nonparents. Biological
psychiatry, 54(12), 1367-1375.
Stallings, J., Fleming, A. S.,Corter, C.,Worthman, C., & Steiner, M. (2001). The effects of infant cries
and odors on sympathy, cortisol, and autonomic responses in new mothers and nonpostpartum
women. Parenting, 1(1-2), 71-100.
Styles, E. (2006). The psychology of attention. New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Treisman, A. M. (1960). Contextual cues in selective listening. Quarterly Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 12(4), 242-248.
Thompson, N. S., Olson, C., & Dessureau, B. (1996). Babies' cries: Who's listening? Who's being
fooled?. Social Research, 763-784.
Tisserand, D. J., & Jolles, J. (2003). On the involvement of prefrontal networks in cognitive ageing.
Cortex, 39(4), 1107-1128.
Wiesenfeld, A. R., & Klorman, R. (1978). The mother's psychophysiological reactions to contrasting
affective expressions by her own and an unfamiliar infant. Developmental Psychology,14(3),
294.
Wiesenfeld, A. R.,Malatesta, C. Z.,& Deloach, L. L. (1981). Differential parental response to familiar
and unfamiliar infant distress signals. Infant Behavior and Development, 4, 281-295.
Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men:
implications for the origins of sex differences. Psychological bulletin, 128(5), 699.
Yago, E., Corral, M. J., & Escera, C. (2001). Activation of the brain network of involuntary attention
as a function of auditory frequency change. Neuroreport, 12, 4093-4097.
Zeskind, P. S. (1980). Adult responses to cries of low and high risk infants. Infant Behavior and
Development, 3, 167-177.

Page | 19
Very pleasant Very unpleasant
Extremely relaxed Tense as I’ve ever been
Extremely ordinary
1.
Extremely unusual
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
APPENDIX A
Contains the exact questionnaire and demographics form used to measure ratings of the stimuli
and collect demographics information.
Figure A-1. The ratings questionnaire used to measure overall pleasantness, tension experienced
and novelty of the sound conditions.
Pleasantness:
Overall, how pleasant did you find the silent phase? (Please circle)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Overall, how pleasant did you find the machine noise phase?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Overall, how pleasant did you find the infant cry phase?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Tension experienced:
Overall, how tense did you feel during the silent phase? (Please circle)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Overall, how tense did you feel during the machine noise phase?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Overall, how tense did you feel during the infant cry phase?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Novelty:
Overall, how novel did you find the machine noise phase? (Please circle)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Overall, how novel did you find the infant cry phase?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Participant number:

Page | 20
Figure A-2. The demographics form used to collect data about the participant’s age, gender,
parental status and age of their youngest child (if applicable).
Date:
Please fill in your details below: Participant number_____________
Age:______________ Gender (Please circle): Male Female Other
How many children do you have? ________________
Age of youngest child (If applicable): ______________
APPENDIX B
The counterbalancing table showing the 12 variations of auditory attention task.
Participant
number
Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Trial 4 Trial 5 Trial 6
1 Silence1
left
Baby1 right Machine1
left
Silence
right
Baby2 left Machine2
right
2 Silence1
left
Machine1
right
Baby1 left Silence
right
Machine2
left
Baby2 right
3 Baby1 left Silence1
right
Machine1
left
Baby2 right Silence2
left
Machine2
right
4 Baby1 left Machine1
right
Silence1
left
left
Silence2
right
5 Machine1
left
Silence1
right
Baby1 left Machine2
right
Silence2
left
Baby2 right
6 Machine1
left
left
Machine2
right
Baby2 left Silence2
right
7 Silence2
left
left
Silence1
right
Baby1 left Machine1
right
8 Silence2
left
Machine2
right
Baby2 left Silence1
right
Machine1
left
Baby1 right
9 Baby2 left Silence2
right
Machine2
left
left
Machine1
right
10 Baby2 left Machine2
right
Silence2
left
left
Silence1
right
11 Machine2
left
Silence2
right
Baby2 left Machine1
right
Silence1
left
Baby1 right
12 Machine2
left
left
Machine1
right
Baby1 left Silence1
right

Dissertation report

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (12)

Similar to Dissertation report

Similar to Dissertation report (20)

Dissertation report