The Neural Correlates Of Selective Attention On Informational Masking

In our daily life,it usually occurs the scene of talking.More and more researchers focus on the phenomenon which interferenced by noise and speaker's sounds in the noise envirment,this is the auditory masking.Now it may divided into two parts:energy masking and informational masking.The research about the informational masking's subcomponents is not clear.The researcher indicated that informational masking can be divided into two components namely perceptual masking and cognitive masking.The recent studies investigated the role of selective attention in the unmasking of energy masking and informational masking.This research uses the experimental means of Event-related potentials(ERPs),will regard the spectrum noise,the sequence language and the inverse language as masking stimulus types,and uses active and passive paradigms,and according to different signal-to-noise ratios(-8,-4,0,4dB)to present sounds,and analyzes ERPs peak and latency which induced by target sounds.Explore different masking stimulus types controlled by selective attention,and the differences of cortex expression which induced by target sounds.Further more,it reveals the modulation of selective attention on informational masking.Experiment 1's result is that in the spectrum noise which induces P2's peak significantly greater than in the sequence language and the inverse language which induces P2's peak.In the sequence language which induces P2's peak significantly greater than in the inverse language which induces P2's peak.They explain that energy masking in masking quantity is greater than informational masking.The sequence language accounts for more psychological resources,induces more stronger cortex expression.But selective attention did not significantly cortex expression of speech signal.Analyze the possible reason is that attention is not enough.So in the experiment 2,enhance the extent of the attention to investigate.Experiment 2's result find that in the active paradigms which induces P2's peak significantly greater than in the passive paradigms which induces P2's peak.In the active paradigm,in the sequence language which induces P2 peak significantly greater than in the inverse language,in the inverse language which induces P2's latency significantly longer than in the spectrum noise which induces P2's latency.In the sequence language which induces N1's peak significantly greater than in the inverse language which induces N1's peak.In the spectrum noise which induces P2's peak significantly greater than in the sequence language and the inverse language which induces P2's peak.In the sequence language which induces N1's latency significantly longer than in the spectrum noise which induces N1's latency.They explain that selective attention significantly increase the target stimulus peak and latency period of evoked potential,enhance the expression of target stimulation of cortex,enhance the expression of target stimulation of cortex.There is attention effect in auditory area.So selective attention releases the expression of speech target,also impacted by different masking stimulus types.Masking sounds which have intelligibility may bring some cognitive load to listeners,and occupy listeners' cognitive processing resources.When listeners enhance the attention on target sounds,listeners pay for cognitive efforts to identify signal sounds and masking sounds,in order to correctly recognise target sounds.