For this activity, you are going to listen to 9 different audio clips while wearing headphones. Be sure that the headphones you are wearing line up so that the right headphone or earbud is on the right ear and vice versa. For clips 1-7a, you will hear different audio in each ear. It is your job to PAY ATTENTION to the audio in the RIGHT EAR and repeat it aloud as you are listening (this task is called shadowing). After you listen to the audio clip, answer the questions about your experience. As you go through each audio clip, think about the filter models of attention and how each demo supports a different theory.

Thank you for choosing to be the experimenter! For this activity, you will be playing 9 different audio clips for the participant, monitoring what they say aloud as they listen, asking them questions, and recording their responses. The procedure is outlined below...

Ask yourself: How difficult was it to shadow (repeat aloud) the audio from the right ear? Did you ever notice anything happen in the left ear?

(to see what was said in each ear click and drag to highlight the text below)

Right ear speech: Today we are learning about dichotic listening. Dichotic listening is a task where different speech is presented to the right and left ear.

Left ear speech: The process of shadowing is when a participant must say aloud speech from one ear that they have been asked to attend to.

What is happening:

You are able to attend to and repeat information coming from the right ear. However, information from the left ear is almost completely ignored. 

Ask yourself: How difficult was it to shadow (repeat aloud) the audio from the right ear? Did you ever notice anything happen in the left ear?

(to see what was said in each ear click and drag to highlight the text below)

Right ear speech: Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?'

Left ear speech: As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions.

What is happening:

Most participants notice that the speech in the left ear changes from a female to male voice, even though they are attending to the speech in the right ear.

In this case, participants notice a change in the sensory features of the unattended words.

Ask yourself: How difficult was it to shadow (repeat aloud) the audio from the right ear? Did you ever notice anything happen in the left ear?

(to see what was said in each ear click and drag to highlight the text below)

Right ear speech:

I will now read an excerpt of a poem by Victor Hugo.

Saddened, and the day will be like night for me.

I will neither see the golden glow of the falling evening,

Nor the sails going down to Harfleur in the distance,

And when I arrive, I will place on your tomb

A bouquet of green holly and flowering heather. This concludes the poem.

Left ear speech:

Tomorrow, at dawn, tomorrow, at dawn, at the hour when the countryside whitens, I will depart.

You see, I know you wait for me.

J’irai par la forêt, j’irai par la montagne. Je ne puis demeurer loin de toi plus longtemps.

I will trudge on, my eyes fixed on my thoughts, ignoring everything around me, without hearing a sound, Alone, unknown, back stooped, hands crossed

What is happening:

Most participants do NOT notice the shift of language from English to French to English in the left ear while they are attending to the speech in the right ear.

In this case, participants are unable to notice a change in the meaningful perceptual features of unattended words.

Ask yourself: How difficult was it to shadow (repeat aloud) the audio from the right ear? Did you ever notice anything happen in the left ear?

(to see what was said in each ear click and drag to highlight the text below)

Right ear speech: Wow, it’s been pretty hard to come up with things to say for you all to listen to. Books, quotes, poems, what else is there? I guess I can just keep taking. Here I am talking about nothing and you have to repeat everything I say.

Left ear speech: This sound should be coming out of your left ear. The one you’re not paying attention to right now. Unless I say hey you, pay attention, listen to me on this side. Ideally, I’d say your name. But I can’t record 34 of these

What is happening:

Ideally, in this experiment I would have said the participants name in the left ear. Instead, I tried to use phrases with meanings that are meant to capture one's attention ("hey you," "pay attention"). My hope was that most participants would notice these phrases.

In research where the participant's name is used, the participant often notices their name being said. In this case, some meaningful perceptual information is noticed by the participant in the unattended to words. 

Ask yourself: How difficult was it to shadow (repeat aloud) the audio from the right ear? Did you ever notice anything happen in the left ear?

(to see what was said in each ear click and drag to highlight the text below)

Right ear speech: Sitting at the mahogany three possibilities

Left ear speech: And now, let us look at these table with her head

What is happening:

Many participants will say aloud a combination of the two sentences in order to make sense of them. (For example, "Sitting at the mahogany table possibilities").

In this case, meaningful perceptual information from the unattended to words leaks into the words being attended to.

Ask yourself: How difficult was it to shadow (repeat aloud) the audio from the right ear? Did you ever notice anything happen in the left ear? Did the word "bank" refer to a financial bank or a river bank?

(to see what was said in each ear click and drag to highlight the text below)

Right ear speech: Yesterday they were standing near a bank deciding what to do

Left ear speech: Maybe we will make lots of money and want for nothing

What is happening:

Many participants will answer that the word "bank" heard in the attended to stream refers to a 'financial bank' rather than 'river bank' when the words in the unattended to speech include 'money' (and vice versa if they include 'river').

In this case, participants are using meaningful perceptions from the unattended to words in order to form an interpretation of the attended to words. 

For these audio clips, watch the gif below and tap the table whenever the circle flashes.

For clip 7a, pay attention to the lower voice.

For clip 7b, pay attention to the voice talking about cockatiels.

Clip 7a "low" speech: The United Nations officially declared 2008 as the International Year of the Potato, to raise its profile in developing nations, calling the crop a "hidden treasure."

Clip 7a "regular" speech: While there are close to 4,000 varieties of potato, it has been bred into many standard or well-know varieties, each of which has particular agricultural or culinary attributes.

Clip 7b "cockatiel" speech: Cockatiels are prized as household pets and companion parrots throughout the world and are relatively easy to breed. As a caged bird, cockatiels are second in popularity only to the budgie.

Clip 7b "green cheek" speech: Green-cheeked parrots are common in aviculture and are popular companion parrots. They are playful, affectionate, and intelligent, known as having a "big personality in a small body."

When was it easier to react to the flashing dot?

What is happening:

Most participants will be slower to notice the flashing dot while listening to 7b than 7a. This is because 7b is more difficult and relies on your ability to distinguish between two meaningful categories while 7a relies on the ability to distinguish between two different sensory experiences. 

First, listen to this clip and pay attention to the speech about summer.

Next, listen to this clip while focusing your attention on reading the paragraph.

Summer is the hottest of the four temperate seasons, falling between spring and autumn. At the summer solstice, the days are longest and the nights are shortest, with day-length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice. The date of the beginning of summer varies according to climate, tradition and culture.

Clip 8 "Attention" speech: Attention is the behavioral andcognitive process of selectively concentrating on a discrete aspect of information, whether deemed subjective or objective, while ignoring other perceivable information. Attention has also been referred to as the allocation of limited processing resources. 

When was the "summer" information easier to pay attention to? While listening to double audio, or having audio and text?

What is happening:

Most participants will have an easier time paying attention to the "summer" information while reading rather than listening. This is because when information comes through two modes of perception we can selectively pay attention to one better than if the information came through the same mode of perception.

Using the results from these audio clips...create your own model of selective attention!

How would you arrange the processes of sensory stores, perceptual channel, response, and filter. What would the filter do?

Consider: Sensory vs perceptual information, difficulty, and perceptual modality.