35
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Executive Function, Visual Attention and the Cocktail Party Problem in Musicians and Non-Musicians

      research-article

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          The goal of this study was to investigate how cognitive factors influence performance in a multi-talker, “cocktail-party” like environment in musicians and non-musicians. This was achieved by relating performance in a spatial hearing task to cognitive processing abilities assessed using measures of executive function (EF) and visual attention in musicians and non-musicians. For the spatial hearing task, a speech target was presented simultaneously with two intelligible speech maskers that were either colocated with the target (0° azimuth) or were symmetrically separated from the target in azimuth (at ±15°). EF assessment included measures of cognitive flexibility, inhibition control and auditory working memory. Selective attention was assessed in the visual domain using a multiple object tracking task (MOT). For the MOT task, the observers were required to track target dots (n = 1,2,3,4,5) in the presence of interfering distractor dots. Musicians performed significantly better than non-musicians in the spatial hearing task. For the EF measures, musicians showed better performance on measures of auditory working memory compared to non-musicians. Furthermore, across all individuals, a significant correlation was observed between performance on the spatial hearing task and measures of auditory working memory. This result suggests that individual differences in performance in a cocktail party-like environment may depend in part on cognitive factors such as auditory working memory. Performance in the MOT task did not differ between groups. However, across all individuals, a significant correlation was found between performance in the MOT and spatial hearing tasks. A stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that musicianship and performance on the MOT task significantly predicted performance on the spatial hearing task. Overall, these findings confirm the relationship between musicianship and cognitive factors including domain-general selective attention and working memory in solving the “cocktail party problem”.

          Related collections

          Most cited references37

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Enumeration versus multiple object tracking: the case of action video game players.

          Here, we demonstrate that action video game play enhances subjects' ability in two tasks thought to indicate the number of items that can be apprehended. Using an enumeration task, in which participants have to determine the number of quickly flashed squares, accuracy measures showed a near ceiling performance for low numerosities and a sharp drop in performance once a critical number of squares was reached. Importantly, this critical number was higher by about two items in video game players (VGPs) than in non-video game players (NVGPs). A following control study indicated that this improvement was not due to an enhanced ability to instantly apprehend the numerosity of the display, a process known as subitizing, but rather due to an enhancement in the slower more serial process of counting. To confirm that video game play facilitates the processing of multiple objects at once, we compared VGPs and NVGPs on the multiple object tracking task (MOT), which requires the allocation of attention to several items over time. VGPs were able to successfully track approximately two more items than NVGPs. Furthermore, NVGPs trained on an action video game established the causal effect of game playing in the enhanced performance on the two tasks. Together, these studies confirm the view that playing action video games enhances the number of objects that can be apprehended and suggest that this enhancement is mediated by changes in visual short-term memory skills.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            A meta-analysis of executive components of working memory.

            Working memory (WM) enables the online maintenance and manipulation of information and is central to intelligent cognitive functioning. Much research has investigated executive processes of WM in order to understand the operations that make WM "work." However, there is yet little consensus regarding how executive processes of WM are organized. Here, we used quantitative meta-analysis to summarize data from 36 experiments that examined executive processes of WM. Experiments were categorized into 4 component functions central to WM: protecting WM from external distraction (distractor resistance), preventing irrelevant memories from intruding into WM (intrusion resistance), shifting attention within WM (shifting), and updating the contents of WM (updating). Data were also sorted by content (verbal, spatial, object). Meta-analytic results suggested that rather than dissociating into distinct functions, 2 separate frontal regions were recruited across diverse executive demands. One region was located dorsally in the caudal superior frontal sulcus and was especially sensitive to spatial content. The other was located laterally in the midlateral prefrontal cortex and showed sensitivity to nonspatial content. We propose that dorsal-"where"/ventral-"what" frameworks that have been applied to WM maintenance also apply to executive processes of WM. Hence, WM can largely be simplified to a dual selection model.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              Tracking multiple independent targets: evidence for a parallel tracking mechanism.

              There is considerable evidence that visual attention is concentrated at a single locus in the visual field, and that this locus can be moved independent of eye movements. Two studies are reported which suggest that, while certain aspects of attention require that locations be scanned serially, at least one operation may be carried out in parallel across several independent loci in the visual field. That is the operation of indexing features and tracking their identity. The studies show that: (a) subjects are able to track a subset of up to 5 objects in a field of 10 identical randomly-moving objects in order to distinguish a change in a target from a change in a distractor; and (b) when the speed and distance parameters of the display are designed so that, on the basis of some very conservative assumptions about the speed of attention movement and encoding times, the predicted performance of a serial scanning and updating algorithm would not exceed about 40% accuracy, subjects still manage to do the task with 87% accuracy. These findings are discussed in relation to an earlier, and independently motivated model of feature-binding--called the FINST model--which posits a primitive identity maintenance mechanism that indexes and tracks a limited number of visual objects in parallel. These indexes are hypothesized to serve the function of binding visual features prior to subsequent pattern recognition.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                6 July 2016
                2016
                : 11
                : 7
                : e0157638
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States of America
                [2 ]Department for Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States of America
                [3 ]Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology (CompNet), Boston University, Boston, MA, United States of America
                [4 ]Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, Boston, MA, United States of America
                [5 ]Department of Psychology, Tufts University, Medford, MA, United States of America
                UNLV, UNITED STATES
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: KC JS AY JZ AP GK. Performed the experiments: KC JS. Analyzed the data: KC JS JZ. Wrote the paper: KC JS GK AP.

                Article
                PONE-D-15-40805
                10.1371/journal.pone.0157638
                4934907
                27384330
                42c65c6d-f3c8-4a3b-ac32-f613af0acf56
                © 2016 Clayton et al

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 15 September 2015
                : 2 June 2016
                Page count
                Figures: 4, Tables: 3, Pages: 17
                Funding
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000055, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders;
                Award ID: R01-DC04545
                Award Recipient : Gerald Kidd, Jr
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000002, National Institutes of Health;
                Award ID: P30-DC04663
                Award Recipient : Gerald Kidd, Jr
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000181, Air Force Office of Scientific Research;
                Award ID: FA9550-12-1-0171
                Award Recipient : Gerald Kidd, Jr
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000006, Office of Naval Research;
                Award ID: ONR N00014-11-1-0535
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: CELEST
                Award ID: NSF SBE-0354378
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: Boston University UROP FROG supplies grant
                Award Recipient :
                This study was funded by National Institutes of Health, grants R01-DC004545, P30-DC004663 ( http://www.nih.gov/), Air Force Office of Scientific Research, grant FA9550-12-1-0171 ( http://www.wpafb.af.mil/afrl/afosr/), Office of naval Research, grant ONR N00014-11-1-0535 ( http://www.onr.navy.mil/), Center of Excellence for Learning in Education, Science and Technology, grant NSF SBE-0354378 ( http://celest.bu.edu/), and Boston University, Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), Funded Research Opportunity Grant (FROG) ( http://www.bu.edu/urop/apply/funding/).
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Neuroscience
                Cognitive Science
                Cognitive Psychology
                Music Cognition
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Psychology
                Cognitive Psychology
                Music Cognition
                Social Sciences
                Psychology
                Cognitive Psychology
                Music Cognition
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Neuroscience
                Cognitive Science
                Cognitive Neuroscience
                Working Memory
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Neuroscience
                Cognitive Neuroscience
                Working Memory
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Neuroscience
                Cognitive Science
                Cognition
                Memory
                Working Memory
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Neuroscience
                Learning and Memory
                Memory
                Working Memory
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Neuroscience
                Cognitive Science
                Cognition
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Neuroscience
                Cognitive Science
                Cognitive Psychology
                Attention
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Psychology
                Cognitive Psychology
                Attention
                Social Sciences
                Psychology
                Cognitive Psychology
                Attention
                Social Sciences
                Linguistics
                Speech
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Neuroscience
                Cognitive Science
                Cognitive Psychology
                Music Cognition
                Music Perception
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Psychology
                Cognitive Psychology
                Music Cognition
                Music Perception
                Social Sciences
                Psychology
                Cognitive Psychology
                Music Cognition
                Music Perception
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Neuroscience
                Sensory Perception
                Music Perception
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Psychology
                Sensory Perception
                Music Perception
                Social Sciences
                Psychology
                Sensory Perception
                Music Perception
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Neuroscience
                Sensory Perception
                Vision
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Psychology
                Sensory Perception
                Vision
                Social Sciences
                Psychology
                Sensory Perception
                Vision
                Physical Sciences
                Physics
                Acoustics
                Bioacoustics
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Bioacoustics
                Custom metadata
                All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. We have also submitted the data set as an excel spread sheet that has been uploaded with this submission.

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

                Comments

                Comment on this article