Executive Function, Visual Attention and the Cocktail Party Problem in Musicians and Non-Musicians.

ABSTRACT: The goal of this study was to investigate how cognitive factors influence performance in a multi-talker, "cocktail-party" like environment in musicians and non-musicians. This was achieved by relating performance in a spatial hearing task to cognitive processing abilities assessed using measures of executive function (EF) and visual attention in musicians and non-musicians. For the spatial hearing task, a speech target was presented simultaneously with two intelligible speech maskers that were either colocated with the target (0° azimuth) or were symmetrically separated from the target in azimuth (at ±15°). EF assessment included measures of cognitive flexibility, inhibition control and auditory working memory. Selective attention was assessed in the visual domain using a multiple object t

SUBMITTER: Clayton KK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4934907 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature