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Proceedings Fonetik 2009 - Institutionen för lingvistik

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<strong>Proceedings</strong>, FONETIK <strong>2009</strong>, Dept. of Linguistics, Stockholm Universitycontrol syllables (same in both ears) where presentedin each trial so maximum score was 12syllables. Participants were divided into twogroups after their aggregate performance in themost demanding, forced left ear condition, inthe four noise levels.ProcedureParticipants sat in a silent room in front of acomputer screen and responded by pressing thefirst letter of the perceived syllable on a keyboard.Syllables and noise where presentedthrough earphones. Conditions and syllableswere presented in random order and the experimentwas programmed in E-prime 1.2 (Psychologysoftware). Nine trials of stimuli werepresented; the first time was the non-forcedbaseline condition. The remaining eight trialswhere either forced left ear or forced right earpresented under the four noise conditions. Thetesting session lasted for approximately 20 minutes.Experiment 2. Visuo-Spatial WM taskParticipantsTwenty students at Stockholm University aged18-44 years (M=32,3), 9 men and 11 women. 3where left-handed and 17 right handed.Design and materialThe design was a 4 x 2, where noise (no noise,noise left ear, noise right ear, noise both ears)were the within subject manipulation and performancelevel (high vs. low performers) werethe between group manipulation. The noise levelwas set in accordance with earlier studies to77 dB. The visuo-spatial WM task (Spanboard<strong>2009</strong>) consists of red dots (memory stimuli)that are presented one at a time at a computerscreen in a four by four grid. Inter-stimulus intervalswere 4 seconds, target is shown 2 secand a 2 sec pause before next target turns up.Participants are asked to recall location, and theorder in which the red dots appear. The workingmemory load increases after every secondtrial and the WM capacity is estimated based onthe number of correctly recalled dots. Participantswere divided into two groups after theirperformance in the spanboard task, an aggregatemeasure of their result in all four conditions.The results for high performers wherebetween 197-247 points (n=9) and low performersbetween 109-177 points (n=11).yProcedureParticipants sat in a silent room in front of acomputer screen and responded by using themouse pointer. The noise was presented in headphones. Recall time is not limited and participantsclick on a green arrow when they decideto continue. Every participant performs the testfour times, one time in each noise condition.Order of noise conditions were randomized.ResultsExperiment 1. Dichotic listeningIn the non-forced baseline condition a significantright ear advantage was shown. A maineffect of attention was found in favor for theright ear, more syllables were recalled in theforced right ear condition in comparison withthe forced left ear, (Figure 1). There was nomain effect of noise while noise affected conditionsdifferently. An interaction between attentionand noise was found (F(28,3) = 5.66, p =.004) In the forced left condition noise exposuredid not affect performance at all, the small increasein the lowest noise condition was nonsignificant.A facilitating effect of noise wasfound in the forced right ear condition, themore noise the better performance (F(30,1) =5.63, p = .024).8.07.57.06.56.05.55.04.54.0Recall as a Function of Attention and NoiseNoise, p = .024Left EarRight earN1 N2 N3 N4Noise LevelsNoise x attention, p = .004Figure 1. Number correct recalled syllables as afunction of noise. Noise levels were N1= no noise,N2 = 50 dB, N3 = 60 dB, and N4 = 72 dB.When participants where divided according toperformance in the dichotic listening task, noiseimproved performance for both groups in theforced-right ear condition. A trend was found inns.162

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