Divided attention, perception and auditory recall

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the effects of divided attention on speech perception and auditory recall. Participants included 16 military and 16 non-military adults, aged 18-50, with hearing thresholds no worse than those categorized as the U.S. Army's Hearing 1 profile, and with forward and reverse digit spans of at least four. Participants studied selected words and sentences prior to testing to accomplish implicit and explicit priming. Speech perception was assessed using Hearing-In-Noise (HINT) sentences presented with and without uncorrelated combat noise in the sound field at 65 dB SPL at 0° azimuth. The combat noise was presented at 5 dB less than the sentences. Participants were required to repeat 30 HINT sentences in each of four conditions: (1) in quiet, (2) in combat noise, (3) in quiet with an additional task, and (4) in combat noise with an additional task. Following each condition, participants were asked to answer questions to assess recall of the HINT sentence material.; There were no group differences in HINT item identification in the four conditions. Significant differences were found in HINT item identification scores between the quiet and noise conditions, and among priming conditions. Auditory recall performance was significantly altered by noise, task and priming conditions, with significant interactions noted between each pairing of conditions.; The mean reaction times for the military group were generally longer than the non-military group. Demographic comparisons showed considerable disparity between the groups, in particular with regard to gender and age. Because of the mean age differences between the groups, a comparison between age and reaction times was made for the divided attention task conditions, which did not reveal any significant effect. Although age and gender differences were significant, they did not appear to affect the outcome of the results when comparing the groups. No statistical differences were noted when comparing reaction times to video game frequency or self-rated skill, thus indicating that the amount of time a person plays video games, or his/her self-rated skill, has little impact on reaction times.