Mechanisms of perceptual organization and auditory selective attention: the role of pattern structure

Five experiments were conducted to determine whether unpracticed listeners shift auditory attention in an anticipatory fashion in accordance with the Frequency x Time structure of a rapid sequence of tones. Listeners were presented on each trial with a series of pure tones either ascending or descending in frequency in a predictable manner. In all experiments, judgments were made more quickly and accurately for targets that were inconsistent with pattern structure. Performance was shown to depend on the magnitude of the frequency violation, with better performance for larger violations. Further, the strength of this effect was attenuated when overall pattern predictability was reduced. These results suggest strongly that unpracticed listeners do not automatically allocate attention in accordance with pattern structure. Rather, it appears that a preattentive perceptual process acts to integrate information likely to have arisen from the same source and that this early perceptual processing imposes constraints on selection.