attention

[Dan Freed <dfreed@xxxxxxxxx>]

Subject:  attention
Malcolm Slaney writes:

Attention helps us to focus on parts of our environment.  It's well known
in vision that orienting a subject can improve their ability to react to a
visual event.  The orienting can either be direct (look here) or indirect
(look over there).  Either way works.  (Oh, the vision people have it so
easy.)

But what about auditory attention?  Previous studies have not shown an
analogous effect.  Does this mean that there is no way to orient a subject
with an auditory signal, or we haven't found the right signal.  What is the
right way to talk about auditory attention?  What factors matter?

-- END of quoted material

When you say that studies have not been able to show an auditory orientation
effect analogous to the visual one, are you referring only to spatial
orientation?  What about a frequency orientation effect?  For that matter,
is there a spatial frequency orientation effect in vision?

- Dan Freed (dfreed@sonic.com)