Examining the Auditory Selective Attention Switch in a Child-Suited Virtual Reality Classroom Environment

The ability to focus ones attention in different acoustical environments has been thoroughly investigated in the past. However, recent technological advancements have made it possible to perform laboratory experiments in a more realistic manner. In order to investigate close-to-real-life scenarios, a classroom was modeled in virtual reality (VR) and an established paradigm to investigate the auditory selective attention (ASA) switch was translated from an audio-only version into an audiovisual VR setting. The new paradigm was validated with adult participants in a listening experiment, and the results were compared to the previous version. Apart from expected effects such as switching costs and auditory congruency effects, which reflect the robustness of the overall paradigm, a difference in error rates between the audio-only and the VR group was found, suggesting enhanced attention in the new VR setting, which is consistent with recent studies. Overall, the results suggest that the presented VR paradigm can be used and further developed to investigate the voluntary auditory selective attention switch in a close-to-real-life classroom scenario.