User:Olefinder/Selective auditory attention

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Selective auditory attention, or selective hearing, is a process of the auditory system where an individual selects or focuses on certain stimuli for auditory information processing while other stimuli are disregarded. This selection is very important as the processing and memory capabilities for humans has a limited capacity. When people use selective hearing, noise from the surrounding environment is heard by the auditory system but only certain parts of the auditory information are chosen to be processed by the brain.

Most often, auditory attention is directed at things people are most interested in hearing. Selective hearing is not a physiological disorder but rather it is the capability of humans to block out sounds and noise. It is the notion of ignoring certain things in the surrounding environment.

Selective auditory attention or selective hearing is a type of selective attention and involves the auditory system. Selective hearing is characterized as the action in which people focus their attention intentionally on a specific source of a sound or spoken words. When people use selective hearing, noise from the surrounding environment is heard by the auditory system but only certain parts of the auditory information are chosen to be processed by the brain.

Most often, auditory attention is directed at things people are most interested in hearing. Selective hearing is not a physiological disorder but rather it is the capability of humans to block out sounds and noise. It is the notion of ignoring certain things in the surrounding environment.

The dividing line between preference and utility is not clear cut.

Selective auditory attention differs from selective perception, in that the filtering in the latter case is mediated by cognitive dissonance.

Bottleneck Effect (Previously "Background")
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In an article by Krans, Isbell, Giuliano, and Neville (2013), selective auditory attention can be seen through the process of bottleneck effect, a process of the brain that inhibits processing of multiple stimuli. For example, a student is focused on a teacher giving a lesson and ignoring the sounds of classmates in a rowdy classroom (p. 53). As a result, the information given from the teacher is stored and encoded in the student's long term memory and the stimuli from the rowdy classroom is completely ignored as if it weren't present in the first place. A brain simply cannot collect all sensory information that is occurring in an environment so only the most relevant and important information is thoroughly processed by the brain.

In an article by Krans, Isbell, Giuliano, and Neville (2013), selective auditory attention is defined as the ability to acknowledge some stimuli while ignoring other stimuli that is occurring at the same time. An example of this is a student focusing on a teacher giving a lesson and ignoring the sounds of classmates in a rowdy classroom (p. 53). This is an example of bottlenecking which means that information cannot be processed simultaneously so only some sensory information gets through the "bottleneck" and is processed. A brain simply cannot process all sensory information that is occurring in an environment so only the most relevant and important information is thoroughly processed by the brain. There have been some models that theorize the pathway of selective auditory attention, notably the early selection model, late selection model, and attenuation model. Addition:

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Development in Youth:
Selective auditory attention is a component of auditory attention, which also includes arousal, orienting response, and attention span. Examining selective auditory attention has been known to be easier in children and adults compared to infants due to the limited ability to use and understand verbal commands. As a result, most of the understanding of auditory selection in infants is derived from other research, such as speech and language perception and discrimination. However, small amounts of selection in infants has been recorded with preference over an infant's mother's voice compared to another female, one's native language over a foreign one , and speech directed towards infants instead of speech in between adults.

As through age, older children have an increased ability to detect and select auditory stimuli compared to their younger counterparts. As a result, this makes older children perform better and make fewer errors in school. This suggests that selective auditory attention is an age dependent ability that increases based on improvements in automatic processing of information. Another factor that could lead to this change is that older children are more equipped to understand a task and the reward and/or punishment for being able to understand and complete a task, thus eliminate unnecessary stimuli more frequently.

Functional Brain Imaging Studies of Auditory Attention:
In recent years, neuroimaging tools such as PET (Positron Emission Tomography) and fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) have been very successful in neural operations with high spatial resolution. Specifically, fMRI has been used to find evidence for attention effects in the auditory cortex in multiple studies. Another study based on "classical" dichotic selective listening paradigms has been proven to be successful as well. The findings showed that the effects were larger in the cortex contralateral to the direction of attention   and were interpreted as "selective tuning of the left or right auditory cortices according to the direction of attention"