Dataset Information

Look who's talking: the deployment of visuo-spatial attention during multisensory speech processing under noisy environmental conditions.

ABSTRACT: In a crowded scene we can effectively focus our attention on a specific speaker while largely ignoring sensory inputs from other speakers. How attended speech inputs are extracted from similar competing information has been primarily studied in the auditory domain. Here we examined the deployment of visuo-spatial attention in multiple speaker scenarios. Steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEP) were monitored as a real-time index of visual attention towards three competing speakers. Participants were instructed to detect a target syllable by the center speaker and ignore syllables from two flanking speakers. The study incorporated interference trials (syllables from three speakers), no-interference trials (syllable from center speaker only), and periods without speech stimulation in which static faces were presented. An enhancement of flanking speaker induced SSVEP was found 70-220 ms after sound onset over left temporal scalp during interference trials. This enhancement was negatively correlated with the behavioral performance of participants -- those who showed largest enhancements had the worst speech recognition performance. Additionally, poorly performing participants exhibited enhanced flanking speaker induced SSVEP over visual scalp during periods without speech stimulation. The present study provides neurophysiologic evidence that the deployment of visuo-spatial attention to flanking speakers interferes with the recognition of multisensory speech signals under noisy environmental conditions.

SUBMITTER: Senkowski D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2596295 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Look who's talking: the deployment of visuo-spatial attention during multisensory speech processing under noisy environmental conditions.

Senkowski Daniel D Saint-Amour Dave D Gruber Thomas T Foxe John J JJ

NeuroImage 20080718 2

In a crowded scene we can effectively focus our attention on a specific speaker while largely ignoring sensory inputs from other speakers. How attended speech inputs are extracted from similar competing information has been primarily studied in the auditory domain. Here we examined the deployment of visuo-spatial attention in multiple speaker scenarios. Steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEP) were monitored as a real-time index of visual attention towards three competing speakers. Particip ...[more]

PMID: 18678262

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Project description:Background: There exists a cohort of children and adults who exhibit an inordinately high degree of discomfort when experiencing what would be considered moderate and manageable levels of sensory input. That is, they show over-responsivity in the face of entirely typical sound, light, touch, taste, or smell inputs, and this occurs to such an extent that it interferes with their daily functioning and reaches clinical levels of dysfunction. What marks these individuals apart is that this sensory processing disorder (SPD) is observed in the absence of other symptom clusters that would result in a diagnosis of Autism, ADHD, or other neurodevelopmental disorders more typically associated with sensory processing difficulties. One major theory forwarded to account for these SPDs posits a deficit in multisensory integration, such that the various sensory inputs are not appropriately integrated into the central nervous system, leading to an overwhelming sensory-perceptual environment, and in turn to the sensory-defensive phenotype observed in these individuals. Methods: We tested whether children (6-16 years) with an over-responsive SPD phenotype (N = 12) integrated multisensory speech differently from age-matched typically-developing controls (TD: N = 12). Participants identified monosyllabic words while background noise level and sensory modality (auditory-alone, visual-alone, audiovisual) were varied in pseudorandom order. Improved word identification when speech was both seen and heard compared to when it was simply heard served to index multisensory speech integration. Results: School-aged children with an SPD show a deficit in the ability to benefit from the combination of both seen and heard speech inputs under noisy environmental conditions, suggesting that these children do not benefit from multisensory integrative processing to the same extent as their typically developing peers. In contrast, auditory-alone performance did not differ between the groups, signifying that this multisensory deficit is not simply due to impaired processing of auditory speech. Conclusions: Children with an over-responsive SPD show a substantial reduction in their ability to benefit from complementary audiovisual speech, to enhance speech perception in a noisy environment. This has clear implications for performance in the classroom and other learning environments. Impaired multisensory integration may contribute to sensory over-reactivity that is the definitional of SPD.

Dataset Information

Look who's talking: the deployment of visuo-spatial attention during multisensory speech processing under noisy environmental conditions.

Publications

Look who's talking: the deployment of visuo-spatial attention during multisensory speech processing under noisy environmental conditions.

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