Strong primary cue weighting is linked to robust dimension-selective attention

Speech perception is supported by multiple redundant acoustic cues. Listeners show stable individual differences in how these cues are weighted, suggesting that there are multiple potential speech perception strategies on which listeners converge. One possible explanation for these differences is that individuals with a more robust ability to direct selective attention to acoustic dimensions are better able to strongly weight a single primary cue, ignoring alternate sources of information. Here, we tested this attention-to-dimension explanation by examining how dimension-selective attention related to acoustic cue use during prosodic categorization in 54 speakers of English as a first language (L1) and 60 L1 Mandarin Chinese speakers. Across tasks, we found consistent individual differences in the extent to which participants relied on a single primary acoustic cue during prosodic categorization. Stronger selective attention to acoustic dimensions was associated with greater reliance on primary cues, indicating that attention might drive cue prioritisation. This relationship held across both English and Mandarin speakers, although cross-task correlations were weaker in the Mandarin group, possibly reflecting ongoing adaptation to second-language prosodic patterns. Overall, these findings suggest that individual cue weighting strategies are shaped by the ability to selectively attend to acoustic dimensions and that speech perception involves active, goal-directed selection of relevant information.