Acoustic Salience Drives Pupillary Dynamics in an Interrupted, Reverberant Task

Area of Science:

• Auditory Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Acoustics

Background:

• Maintaining selective attention in real-world listening is difficult due to reverberation and interruptions.
• The impact of these acoustic challenges on selective attention and cognitive load is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how reverberation and sudden interruptions affect selective attention and cognitive load.
• To examine the relationship between behavioral performance (syllable recall) and physiological responses (pupil dilation).

Main Methods:

• A spatial selective attention task with two competing syllable streams was used.
• Stimuli were presented in pseudo-anechoic or reverberant conditions, with random interruptions.
• Syllable recall accuracy and pupil dilation were measured.

Main Results:

• Reverberation impaired overall performance and disrupted attention, especially with interruptions.
• Reverberation reduced peak pupil dilation in uninterrupted trials, indicating reduced scene clarity.
• Pupil dilations to interruptions showed strong perceptual salience, unaffected by room conditions or trial sequencing.

Conclusions:

• Reverberation degrades auditory scene clarity and affects selective attention.
• Stimulus salience, particularly from unexpected interruptions, strongly drives cognitive load.
• Cognitive load is more influenced by the salience of auditory events than by task performance metrics alone.