Figure 4.

“Change deafness” task: improved results using tactile inputs for change detection

Experiment 4.

The task and results of a “change deafness” experiment (experiment 4) assessing the role of directed attention for detecting a single sound disappearance within a complex auditory scene in motion.

(A) The participant listened twice to a sound scene. The first iteration always consisted of 8 moving sound sources. In the second iteration, the participants were asked to detect whether one of the sound sources disappeared. In 75% of the cases one sound disappeared, while in the remaining 25% the two iterations were identical. There were three test conditions: (1) with no directed attention [No Cue], (2) with directed attention to the disappearing source using text on a screen showing its name in the first iteration [Text Cue], (3) directed attention to the disappearing source using matching tactile input in the first iteration [Tactile Cue].

(B) Hit rate results (1 signifying 100% accuracy) for the three conditions (Wilcoxon signed-rank tests).

(C) Sensitivity (d’) results for the three conditions (Wilcoxon signed-rank tests; ∗∗∗p < 0.001, ∗∗p < 0.01, ∗p < 0.05, p < 0.1).