Question : Cherry’s (1953) scientific investigations into the Cocktail Party phenomenon

have greatly informed our understanding of selective attention. Please describe the dich
otic listening task as used by Cherry, and discuss its key findings. Please also explain ho
w this task has been used in later ERP studies of selective attention, and discuss their ke
y findings.

Dichotic listening is a technique based on the simultaneous presentation of two different audit

ory stimuli, one in each ear. The stimuli presented can vary from words to syllables, to letters,

and even to musical sounds. In addition,by using this test we gathered everyone from the

party and perform the test for all to obatin our results.. Thus, the information received in one

ear passes exclusively to the opposite cerebral hemisphere. It then happens that, if there’s an i

njury in any of the cerebral hemispheres, one can observe a deficit in the ear contralateral to t

he injury. All under a dichotic listening condition.

Cherry's initial findings are influential in cognitive science, although there are differing vanta

ge point about how attention can shift in people who later recall an encounter on a task-unrela

ted medium. First, early-filter theories might be conclude that a shift in irrelevant channel tha

t is subtle enough to be remembered by only a few participants might be remembered only be

cause their focus was drawn away from the task-relevant channel and toward the irrelevant ch

annel when the change occurred. Second, late-filter theories, contends that all origins of infor

mation are semantically understood at the same moment. It can be easily detected if the infor

mation is processed automatically and the semantic change accompanying backward speech i

s extreme (Hill & Miller, 2010; Hillyard, 1981) .

In a classical ERP selective attention sample, adult listeners were asked to attend one ear to id

entify rare high-frequency but obviously less than 25000 hz, tones in a rapid sequence of nor

mal and target tones delivered to both ears (Hillyard et al 1973). Standard tones delivered to t

he attended ear produced greater N100s (negativity between 80 and 120 ms) than the same to
nes when unattended. Targets introduced to the attended ear produced greater P300s (positivit

y between 250 and 400 ms) than unattended targets.(Hillyard, 1981) The discovery that some p

ortion of the attention effect reflects the distribution of underlying ERP components indicates

that attention modulates exogenous neural function. However, focus results in other time win

dows can have distributions other than visual ERP reactions.(Hill & Miller, 2010; Hillyard, 1981)

In the current situation, we compared the performance of normal subjects in three age groups

and of medicated Parkinson's disease patients on auditory selective attention processes. Two t

one sequences were dichotically presented. Subjects responded to deviant tones in the attende

d location. Event‐related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from nine scalp electrodes. The old

group showed significant decline in hit rate, increase in N1 amplitude, and reduction in P3a,

P3b, target negativity, and mismatch negativity amplitude. The amplitude and duration of late

Nd increased with age, reflecting modulation of both attended and unattended standard ERPs.

Although the middle group showed a similar pattern of ERP changes, the effects were general

ly nonsignificant. The Parkinson's disease group showed little further disruption of behavioral

or ERP measures. However, Parkinson's disease affected late Nd in the direction opposite of t

hat of aging, reflecting differential modulation of unattended standard positivity.

ERP studies have also been carried out on children above the age of five. A dichotic listening

approach was used. Though 8-year-olds, 14-year-olds, and adult listeners attended either spec

ific pitch ranges or specific syllables to detect longer time targets while ignoring other causes,

there was a negative concentration influence between 200 and 400 ms in all schools, accordin

g to Berman and Friedman (1995). The amplification of this concentration phenomenon incre

ased and its delay decreased.(Sanders, Stevens, Coch, & Neville, 2006). Hillyards (1973) theory, f

inding may suggest the early stimulus selection process of the species hypothesized by Broad

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bent (1970, 1971), Treisman (1969), and others, often referred to as 'filtering' or 'input selecti

on.' When an unattended stimuli are found to vary in some easily distinguishable physical cha

racteristics, these authors claim that stimulus set selection is possible (such as pitch, location,

color, etc.) (Sanders, Stevens, Coch, & Neville, 2006).

Though Cherry's thesis can be evaluator for moving real-life phenomena to an artificial labor

atory setting, as a result of this work, other researchers, beginning with Broadbent, were able

to generate ideas about focused auditory focus.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) are evoked brain potentials that are averaged across many trial repetiti

ons with individual trials aligned (i.e. time-locked) to a specific behavioral event, typically the onset o

f the stimulus (s-lock) or the onset of the behavioral response (r-lock). These evoked potential average

s may reflect brain activities during the stimulus encoding/analyzing stage (stimulus component wave

form, or 'S-component'), during the response preparation/production stage (response component wave

form, or 'R-component'), or a combination thereof. In the stimulus-locked average of the ensemble of t

he recorded waveforms (i.e. in the s-locked ERP), the contribution of an R-component will be convol

uted, due to the trial-by-trial variance in reaction time (RT). Two independent methods can be used to

recover those components, one based on Fourier transform techniques which was first proposed by Ha

nsen (1983) in the context of ERP component isolation and the other based on a recursive iteration ap

proach through which the contamination of the R or S-component is successively removed from the s-

locked or r-locked ERP waveforms, respectively. The iterative procedure is analytically proven to con

verge to the Fourier-based solution, demonstrating the equivalence of the two approaches. Finally, if t

he condition of a single intermediate D-component is satisfied, then one can recover this component

waveform along with the probability distributions of the relative durations of the two underlying linea

r stages. D-component assumption cannot be distinguished solely on the ground of the available data s

et. The technique developed here outlines the assumptions and the boundary conditions upon which e

nsemble ERP waveforms are to be analyzed and interpreted in terms of processing mechanisms relate

d to stimulus, to response, or to the transition between the two.

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.[Donna Coch1 , Lisa D. Sanders2 , and Helen J. Neville2 / citeseerx.ist.psu.

edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.564.2268&rep=rep1&type=pdf]

Relation between cherry and the erp study

In a now classic ERP study of selective auditory attention, Hillyard, Hink, Schwent, and Picto

n (1973) dichotically presented 2 similar series of tone pips and required participants to atten

d only to tones played to the designated ear; comparison of the ERP responses to the same to

nes when attended and unattended revealed an enhanced N1 component to attended tones. A

similar N1 attention effect was reported for syllables and environmental sounds (Hink, Hillya

rd, & Benson, 1978; Hink, van Voorhis, Hillyard, & Smith, 1977). Subsequently, researchers

began to report not only an enhanced N1 for the same stimulus when attended as compared w

ith when unattended but also a later and broader negativity, termed the processing negativity

or negative difference (Nd) wave (Woldorff & Hillyard, 1991; Hillyard & Picton, 1987; Hans

en, Dickstein, Berka, & Hillyard, 1983; Hansen & Hillyard, 1980; Na¨a¨ta¨nen, 1979, 1982).

It was suggested that the Nd reflected orienting to or further processing of an auditory input d

eemed relevant in preliminary sensory analyses (Na¨a¨ta¨nen, 1979). Currently, the Nd is tho

ught to consist of both early (Nde) and late (Ndl ) components; the early fronto-central comp

onent may reflect rapid initial featural analysis of stimuli whereas the late anterior component

reflects further processing of the stimuli and maintenance of the attentional trace (e.g., see W

oods, 1990; Na¨a¨ta¨nen, 1982). The Nde is superimposed on the N1, and there is some evide

nce that the N1 itself is actually not modulated by attention, as first reported; rather, the effect

s of the slow wave Nde are simply observed in the typical N1 time window (Woods, 1990; N

a¨a¨ta¨nen, 1982). Other evidence suggests that the N1/M100 (the MEG counterpart to the N1

00) itself is modulated by attention (e.g., Woldorff et al., 1993)

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Findings

All scores on the standardized behavioral tests administered to children were within normal li

mits. PPVT (Dunn & Dunn, 1997) standard scores ranged from 103 to 139, with an average o

f 118.8 ± 9.8; corresponding percentile rank scores ranged from 58 to 99.5. Standard scores o

n the Word Identification subtest of the WRMT (Woodcock, 1987) ranged from 94 to 145, wi

th an average of 113.4 ± 14.3. Standard scores on the Word Attack subtest of the WRMT ran

ged from 81 to 145, with an average of 115.8 ± 15.3

References

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 Coch, D., Sanders, L. D., & Neville, H. J. (2005). An event-related potential study of selective au

ditory attention in children and adults.Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17(4), 605-622.

 Hill, K. T., & Miller, L. M. (2010). Auditory attentional control and selection during cocktail pa

rty listening. Cerebral Cortex, 20(3), 583-590.

 Hillyard, S. A. (1981). Selective auditory attention and early event-related potentials: A rejoinde

r.

 Sanders, L. D., Stevens, C., Coch, D., & Neville, H. J. (2006). Selective auditory attention in 3- to

5-year-old children: An event-related potential study. Neuropsychologia, 44(11), 2126-2138. doi:

https://doi-org.ezproxy.brunel.ac.uk/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2005.10.007

 Wood, N. L., & Cowan, N. (1995). The cocktail party phenomenon revisited: Attention and me

mory in the classic selective listening procedure of cherry (1953). Journal of Experimental Psych

ology: General, 124(3), 243.