Salient features of task-irrelevant continuous speech distort subjective time

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Auditory Neuroscience
• Linguistics

Background:

• Auditory salience models predict acoustic change and unpredictability increase sound stream salience.
• Prior research links acoustic change and unpredictable sounds to physiological arousal and task disruption.
• The role of linguistic features (phonemic, lexical/semantic surprisal) in attentional orienting remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether linguistic features contribute to attentional capture by task-irrelevant speech.
• To determine if attentional capture occurs before or after initial linguistic analysis.
• To introduce a novel method for assessing attentional capture using naturalistic speech.

Main Methods:

• Developed a paradigm where participants tap to a metronome while ignoring audiobook passages.
• Measured shifts in tap timing as an indicator of attentional capture by salient speech features.
• Analyzed the influence of acoustic change and phonemic surprisal on subjective time distortions.

Main Results:

• Task-irrelevant speech features captured attention, increased arousal, and expanded subjective time, altering tap timing.
• Subjective time distortions were influenced by both acoustic change and phonemic surprisal.
• Evidence suggests attentional orienting occurs after initial stages of linguistic processing.

Conclusions:

• Attentional orienting to auditory stimuli is influenced by linguistic processing, specifically phonemic surprisal.
• The findings challenge models suggesting attentional capture solely precedes linguistic analysis.
• This research provides new insights into the interplay between auditory perception, linguistics, and attention.