Spatial selective attention in a complex auditory environment such as polyphonic music - Sound example and experimental design


Figure 1A: Example of the melody course of the three parts. Part-A (violin) initially contains the soprano, part-B (descant saxophone) the alto, and part-C (clarinet) the bass register. A falling interval jump (FIJ) in the melodic contour of at least one octave in part-A (FIJ in the soprano) makes it to become the bass voice register; isochronal part-B becomes the soprano and part-C becomes the alto. Later in this example, an FIJ occurs in part-C while forming the alto, after this FIJ part-C becomes the bass again while part-A take on the alto.
Figure 1B shows an excerpt of a musical stimulus. FIJs occurred in each part with the same number. Targets were defined as those occurring in part-A, distracters as those occurring in part-B and -C. FIJs in the melodic contour happened in parts, if they covered the soprano or the alto. The time period between successive targets (irrespective of the part and of being relevant or irrelevant) was between 1333 and 4000ms.


Click HERE for a sound example (note that the size of this file is about 2.5MB)