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Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2007 September 20.
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Cognition. 2005 November ; 98(1): 3151.
Auditory attention to frequency and time: an analogy to visual

localglobal stimuli
Timothy Justus* and Alexandra List
University of California, Berkeley CA, USA
Abstract
Two priming experiments demonstrated exogenous attentional persistence to the fundamental

auditory dimensions of frequency (Experiment 1) and time (Experiment 2). In a divided-attention
task, participants responded to an independent dimension, the identification of three-tone sequence
patterns, for both prime and probe stimuli. The stimuli were specifically designed to parallel the
localglobal hierarchical letter stimuli of [Navon D. (1977). Forest before trees: The precedence of
global features in visual perception. Cognitive Psychology, 9, 353383] and the task was designed
to parallel subsequent work in visual attention using Navon stimuli [Robertson, L. C. (1996).
Attentional persistence for features of hierarchical patterns. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General, 125, 227249; Ward, L. M. (1982). Determinants of attention to local and global features
of visual forms. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 8, 562
581]. The results are discussed in terms of previous work in auditory attention and previous
approaches to auditory localglobal processing.
Keywords
Audition; Attention; Priming; Global; Local; Hierarchical; Frequency; Time; Temporal
1. Introduction
1.1. Attention to localglobal structure and spatial frequencies in vision
Information is carried at multiple hierarchical levels in the visual world. These different levels
of information may be more or less relevant at different times and under different
circumstances. For instance, when observing a landscape, the viewer may wish to examine the
details of one figure or form, or consider how these elements sum within the larger scene. Over
the past 25 years, a simple but elegant set of stimuli has been used in a variety of research to
test hypotheses about visual hierarchical processing. These are the localglobal letter stimuli
of Navon (1977), which consist of one large global letter made up of smaller local letters (Fig.
1A).
The Navon stimuli have been used in cognitive psychological research to test hypotheses about
the way in which the visual system handles information occurring at multiple hierarchical levels
in a visual scene, including how these levels are perceived and how attention can be directed
to them (e.g. Kim, Ivry, & Robertson, 1999;Lamb & Robertson, 1988;Martin, 1979;Navon,
1977;Robertson, 1996;Sergent, 1982;Shulman & Wilson, 1987;Ward, 1982). The stimuli have
also been used in neuropsychological research to examine how the brain implements local
global processing in an asymmetric manner, with the left and right hemispheres more attuned
to local and global levels, respectively (e.g. Delis, Robertson, & Efron, 1986;Lamb, Robertson,
* Corresponding author. Department of Neurology (127E), University of California/VANCHCS, 150 Muir Road, Research Building 4,
Martinez CA, 94553-4668 USA. E-mail address:tjustus@ebire.org (T. Justus).
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& Knight, 1989;Robertson & Delis, 1986;Robertson, Lamb, & Knight, 1988). Finally, the
stimuli have been used in developmental work to investigate the emergence of localglobal
processing in normally developing children (e.g. Dukette & Stiles, 1996) and in abnormally
developing populations, such as children with Williams Syndrome (e.g. Bihrle, Bellugi, Delis,
& Marks, 1989;Farran, Jarrold, & Gathercole, 2003;Pani, Mervis, & Robinson, 1999) and
autism (Mottron, Burack, Stauder, & Robaey, 1999;Mottron, Burack, Iarocci, Belleville, &
Enns, 2003;Plaisted, Swettenham, & Rees, 1999).
One set of experiments by Robertson (1996) (also see Ward, 1982) attempted to explore the
cognitive processes involved in identifying items at local and global levels (Fig. 1A). For each
trial, a Navon hierarchical letter stimulus was displayed and the participants task was to
identify which of two target letters (e.g. A and E) was present in the stimulus. Each stimulus
contained one target letter (e.g. A) and one distracter letter (e.g. H), and the target letters
occurred unpredictably at either the local or global level. Robertson (1996, Experiment 2) found
that response times were faster when the target level, local or global, was the same as that of
the preceding trial (same level), compared to when the level changed (different level). This
occurred even when the target pattern (A or E) changed, suggesting that there was an
attentional persistence to the level (local or global), and not the form, of the preceding
stimulus.
In a subsequent experiment, which explored how levels might be primed independently of

perceptual form, level priming failed to occur when primes were constructed with reduced low
spatial frequency information (Experiment 3). This supported the idea that priming to local
and global levels is normally mediated by a mechanism involving representation of spatial
frequency, with local and global information carried in relatively high and low spatial
frequencies, respectively. By eliminating one set of frequency information in the prime, the
localglobal structure of the prime stimulus could not be parsed into two sets of relatively highand low-frequency information. Interestingly, not all stimulus dimensions produced a priming
effect in these experiments; participants were not any faster when the prime and probe were
similar in color, polarity, or contrast. Critical for the spatial frequency hypothesis, the
manipulation of these other arguably fundamental dimensions did not account for the absence
of the level priming effect when low-frequency information was filtered (Experiment 4).
Our goal in the current studies was to design a set of auditory stimuli that could be used in a
paradigm as analogous as possible to that of Robertson (1996), and which could be later used
to test a variety of questions about perception and attention across the two modalities of vision
and audition. To do this, we first examined what the candidate dimensions were within the
auditory system and whether they demonstrated hemispheric asymmetries similar to those
found with spatial frequencies in vision.
1.2. Frequency and time as the indispensable attributes of audition
Arguably, the most fundamental feature to which the auditory system is attuned is frequency.
Several researchers have developed the idea that frequency is the auditory analogue of space
in vision, in part because of the way in which sensory transduction occurs; whereas the retina
and primary visual cortex are organized spatiotopically, the cochlea and primary auditory
cortex are organized tonotopically. One of the most thorough treatments of this analogy from
an information processing perspective was provided by Kubovy and Van Valkenburg (2001),
who argued that frequency, along with time, are the two indispensable attributes of audition,
whereas space and time are the two indispensable attributes of vision. These authors referred
to a stimulus attribute as indispensable if by distributing elements over the dimension, multiple
perceptual objects are perceived. In support of the Theory of Indispensable Attributes (TIA),
Kubovy and Van Valkenburg appealed to work in auditory perceptual grouping which has
demonstrated effects in frequencytime that are analogous to the visual Gestalt principles
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operating in spacetime (e.g. Bregman, 1990;Handel, 1989). Further, they introduced

additional parallels between spacetime and frequencytime relating to figure-ground
segregation and edge assignment that strengthen the case for a notion of auditory objecthood
that is defined by frequencytime.
The special roles of frequency and time as formulated by Kubovy and Van Valkenburg (see
also Kubovy, 1981) are not without controversy (e.g. Kubovy, 1988;Handel, 1988;Neuhoff,
2003;Van Valkenburg & Kubovy, 2003). This is partly because in addition to asserting positive
claims about frequency and time, TIA also makes certain negative claims about the role of
space in audition and auditory attention (to which we return in the General Discussion).
Nonetheless, all of these authors would likely agree that frequency and time are among the
most important organizing dimensions in the auditory modality, if not exclusively so, and that
how attention may be directed to auditory frequency and time is a topic that merits further
research.
1.3. The lateralization of frequency and time
In addition to being among the more fundamental dimensions of the auditory modality,
evidence from neuroimaging and neuropsychology suggests that like spatial frequency,
auditory frequency and time may show the requisite hemispheric asymmetries that long have
motivated theories of localglobal or analytic-holistic processing (e.g. Bever & Chiarello,
1974).
The hemispheric asymmetry within the dimension of frequency was proposed by Ivry and
Robertson (1998) in their Double Filtering by Frequency (DFF) theory (also see Ivry & Lebby,
1993). These authors argued that many of the asymmetries in both audition and vision result
from a preferred role for the left and right hemispheres in processing relatively high and low
frequencies, respectively, in the senses of both pitch and spatial frequency. The hemispheric
asymmetry within the dimension of time has been developed by many authors, including
Ackermann and Riecker (2004),Allard and Scott (1975),Deacon (1997), Ivry and Robertson
(1998, Chapter 6), Tallal (1980), and Zatorre, Belin, and Penhune, (2002). We shall refer to
this idea as the Asymmetric Sampling in Time (AST) theory, the name ascribed to it by Poeppel
(2003). Like the DFF theory, the AST theory also suggests that the left and right hemispheres
have preferred roles in the processing of high- and low-frequency information, but at much
larger time scales such that the relevant auditory dimension has shifted from one perceptual
attribute (pitch) to another (time). Thus, the left and right hemispheres are argued to have
advantages in processing events occurring at fast and slow temporal scales, respectively.1
The two theories, DFF and AST, are not necessarily mutually exclusive; after all, frequency
is the inverse of time. The difference between the two emerges from the different positions on
the frequencytime continuum occupied by the psychological experiences of pitch and
temporal events. As discussed by Ivry and Robertson (1998), it is quite possible that both
asymmetries could co-exist.
1.4. The current investigation: the highlow and fastslow stimuli
Given that frequency and time are among the more fundamental auditory dimensions to which
attention may potentially be directed, and given that both have been suggested to show a
hemispheric asymmetry that is potentially analogous to that relating to spatial frequency in
vision, we chose these two dimensions as the basis for two sets of stimuli created to parallel
1Poeppel (2003) argues that the left and right hemispheres are preferentially tuned to fixed temporal windows of ~2040 and ~150250
ms, respectively. Thus his hypothesis differs from the DFF theory both in terms of the perceptual attribute (time rather than frequency),
and also in that these values are absolute and not relative. We focus here on the distinction between the perceptual attributes.
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the Navon stimuli. In Experiment 1, we introduce the HighLow stimuli, designed to explore
attentional persistence to auditory frequency range (Fig. 1B), and in Experiment 2 we introduce
the FastSlow stimuli, designed to explore attentional persistence to auditory temporal range
(Fig. 1C). These stimulus sets were both devised such that participants can attend to target
patterns that may occur in either high or low frequency ranges and in either fast or slow temporal
ranges, just as the letters in Navon stimuli may appear at either the local or global levels. To
do this, we chose four three-tone sequences as analogues of the four letters. Further, like the
letters these four sequences can be manipulated independently at the two levels, such that all
possible target patterns at one level can be presented with all possible distracter patterns at the
other level.
As a first experimental test of the stimuli, in this paper we demonstrate priming of frequency
ranges and temporal ranges. The divided-attention priming task was chosen to be as analogous
as possible to previous work using Navon stimuli (Robertson, 1996;Ward, 1982; see Fig. 1A
C). In addition to demonstrating two ways in which selection occurs within the auditory
modality (frequency and time), the design of the current stimuli as experimental analogues of
the Navon localglobal visual stimuli suggests a variety of future studies in cognitive, neuroand developmental psychology exploring whether parallels exist between the two modalities
in the representation of spatial frequency, auditory frequency, and time.
2. Experiment 1
The first experiment was designed to demonstrate priming of auditory frequency ranges, using
a divided-attention task parallel to that of Robertson (1996, Experiment 2). In this experiment,
participants were instructed to identify three-tone target sequences, which could occur in one
of two frequency ranges.
2.1. Method
2.1.1. ParticipantsSixteen right-handed participants from the Berkeley community
participated, with a median age of 20.5 years. The majority of the participants were musically
trained, with the number of years of musical training ranging from 0 to 20. Participants were
required to identify at least 14 of 16 trials within four practice blocks before beginning the
experiment, taking a mean of 2.2 blocks.
2.1.2. Stimuli and designThe stimuli for each trial in the HighLow version of the
experiment consisted of two simultaneous three-tone sequences, each presented in a different
frequency range (Fig. 1B). The lower and higher of the two sequences were presented in
fundamental frequency ranges of 262330 Hz (C4D4E4) and 371467 Hz (F#4G#4A#4),
respectively. Each tone was 150 ms in duration (with 10-ms ramps at onset and offset) and was
constructed using five harmonics of inversely proportional amplitude. The rationale both for
using frequency ranges separated by a dissonant interval (tritone) and for adding harmonics
was to help the participants perceptually segregate the two sequences. The amplitude of both
the lower and higher tones and their harmonics were adjusted to equate for loudness (i.e. the
lower components were constructed with larger amplitudes). The stimuli were presented at an
overall sound level of about 70 dB SPL.
Four possible three-note sequences could occur in either frequency range: a risingrising (rr)
pattern, fallingfalling (ff) pattern, risingfalling (rf) pattern, or fallingrising (fr) pattern.2
These stimuli are designed to parallel the Navon (1977) hierarchical letter stimuli: the four
patterns are analogous to four letters, and the two auditory frequency ranges are analogous to
2rr: CDE or F#G#A#, ff: EDC or A#G#F#, rf: CDC or F#G#F#, fr: EDE or A#G#A#.
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the two visual hierarchical levels, each proposed to be perceived in terms of its relative spatial
frequency information (compare Fig. 1A and B). For each participant, two of the four patterns
served as targetsone samedirection sequence (rr or ff) and one changing-direction sequence
(rf or fr)and the two remaining patterns served as distracters. Each trial combined one target
in one frequency range with one distracter in the other frequency range, and the participants
task was to identify as quickly and accurately as possible which of their two targets had been
presented. The use of the four patterns as targets or distracters, and the mapping of the two
targets to the left and right hands were counterbalanced across participants.
Pairs of consecutive trials were ordered such that they involved (1) the same or different target
frequency range, (2) the same or different target pattern and (3) the same or different distracter
pattern. All eight transitions were equally probable, occurring eight times in each of four 65trial blocks. Each trial simultaneously served as prime and probe, with the first and final trials
using identical stimuli to complete a cycle of 64 prime-probe transitions. The trial order in each
of the four blocks was fixed, and the order in which the blocks were presented to the participants
was counterbalanced.
Each trial began with visual fixation for 1000 ms, followed by the auditory stimulus (450 ms).
Participants were given up to 5500 ms after the stimulus offset to make a response. Four trials
timed out (for all participants combined) and were removed with the subsequent trial. Errors
and the subsequent trial were excluded from response time analyses, as were trials exceeding
three standard deviations of each participants mean. Error rates were calculated as a proportion
of non-excluded observations in each cell.
2.2. Results and discussion
Two 2222 analyses of variance examined the effects of Frequency Range (same vs.
different), Target (same vs. different), Target Frequency Range (high vs. low), and Target
Pattern (samedirection: rr/ff vs. changing-direction: rf/fr)3 on the participants response times
and error rates. The first two of these variables concern effects of the preceding trial, whereas
the latter two concern effects of the target stimulus itself, independently of the preceding trial.
Main effects of all of these variables were found. Participants were faster (mean 118 ms) and
more accurate when the target was presented in the same frequency range as the preceding trial
[RT: F(1,15)=20.5, P<.001; errors: F(1,15)=9.6, P=.007] and faster and more accurate when
the target pattern differed from the preceding trial [RT: F(1,15)=8.0, P=.01; errors: F(1,15)
=9.2, P=.008]. Participants were also generally faster and more accurate for targets presented
in the high frequency range [RT: F(1,15)=13.0, P=.003; errors: F(1,15)=5.7, P=.03] and faster
for the samedirection (rr/ff) target pattern [RT: F(1,15)=6.0, P=.03; errors: n.s.].
Additionally, the frequency-range priming effect was larger when the target also remained the
same [Frequency RangeTarget, RT: F(1,15)=19.1, P=.001; errors: n.s.]. Despite this
interaction, the effect of frequency range was still significant for trials in which the target
changed [same target trials, RT: t(15)=5.7, P<.001; errors: t(15)=3.1, P=.007; different target
trials, RT: t(15)=2.6, P=.02; errors: t(15)=2.4, P=.03; Fig. 2A].
The priming effect for frequency range also held for both the high frequency range [RT: t(15)
=4.5, P<.001; errors: t(15)=4.0, P=.001] and the low frequency range [RT: t(15)=2.8, P=.01;
errors: t(15)=1.6, P=.14]. This interaction was marginally significant [RT: F(1,15)=3.5, P=.
08; errors: F(1,15)=4.9, P=.04; Fig. 2B].4
3We grouped the Target Patterns in this way because previous work had suggested that series of three ascending tones or three descending
tones are easier to identify than are other combinations of three notes (e.g. Divenyi & Hirsh, 1975,1978). The main effect along this
dimension supports a similar finding in our study. Subsequent comparisons confirmed that there were no significant differences between
the two samedirection patterns (rr and ff) or between the two changing-direction patterns (rf and fr) in either experiment.
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We also considered the effects of absolute pitch, the ability to name a tone according to its
chroma (e.g. C or do) in the absence of any named reference tone. Seven of the participants
were within one semitone of the correct names on a simple identification test at the end of the
experimental session. We defined the possession of absolute pitch somewhat generously in
order to repeat the 2222 ANOVA with absolute pitch as a between-subjects variable. No
main effects of absolute pitch were found, and this variable did not interact with any of the
other reported effects, including the priming effect for frequency range.
Experiment 1 demonstrated that when listeners have just identified a target pattern in a given
frequency range, they are faster to identify another target pattern in that same frequency range.
The pattern of effects is similar to that reported by Robertson, 1996, Experiment 2), using
visual hierarchical letter stimuli in an analogous design. The most important result for our
purposes is the main effect of frequency range; participants were (118 ms) faster to identify
which of their two targets had been presented when the target was presented in the same
frequency range as in the preceding trial. This effect occurred for both the high and low
frequency ranges, and regardless of whether the specific target pattern changed or remained
the same (Fig. 2). We shall return to the broader implications of this result after presenting the
results of Experiment 2, which examined attention to the dimension of time using a precisely
analogous method.
3. Experiment 2
The second experiment was designed to demonstrate priming of auditory temporal ranges,
using a design parallel to that of Robertson (1996, Experiment 2) and the current Experiment
1. In this experiment, the three-tone target sequences were organized to create a hierarchical
temporal structure.
3.1. Method
3.1.1. ParticipantsA separate group of 16 right-handed participants from the Berkeley
community participated, with a median age of 19.5 years. The participants were musically
trained, with the number of years of musical experience ranging from 3 to 19. Participants took
a mean of 2.3 practice blocks before beginning the experiment.
3.1.2. Stimuli and designThe stimuli for each trial in the FastSlow version of the
experiment consisted of nine-tone sequences. Each tone belonged to the frequency range 185
467 Hz (F#3-G#3-A#3-C4-D4-E4-F#4-G#4-A#4). Each tone was 100 ms in duration and was
constructed as in Experiment 1.
The same four sequence types as in Experiment 1 were used as targets and distracters (rr, ff,
rf, fr). Rather than being presented simultaneously in two different frequency ranges, the two
sequences within each stimulus were present at different temporal scales. The nine-tone
sequence was constructed such that one three-item sequence was repeated three times to form
another three-item sequence. For instance, in the first FastSlow sequence shown in Fig. 1C,
the risingrising pattern occurs three times in the faster temporal range (300 ms) and the falling
falling pattern occurs in the slower temporal range (900 ms). The remainder of the design was
exactly the same as in Experiment 1, except that temporal range replaced frequency. Each trial
combined one target in one temporal range with one distracter in the other temporal range, and
the participants task was to identify which of their two targets had been presented.
4In an analysis in which each response time was log transformed to correct the skewed distributions that are typical of response times,
this interaction was significant [F(1,15)=5.0, P=.04]. The significance of all other effects, in both this experiment and in Experiment 2,
was comparable in the analyses of the transformed data.
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Six trials timed out after 4000 ms (for all participants combined). Errors, their subsequent trials,
and outliers were treated as before.
3.2. Results and discussion

As in Experiment 1, two 2222 analyses of variance examined the effects of Temporal
Range (same vs. different), Target (same vs. different), Target Temporal Range (fast vs. slow),
and Target Pattern (samedirection: rr/ff vs. changing-direction: rf/fr) on the participants
response times and error rates. The analysis is identical to that of Experiment 1, substituting
temporal range for frequency range. Main effects of three of these variables were found.
Participants were faster (mean 107 ms), but not significantly more accurate, when the target
was presented in the same temporal range as the preceding trial [RT: F(1,15)=36.6, P<.001;
errors: n.s.]. Unlike Experiment 1, they were neither faster nor more accurate when the target
pattern differed from the preceding trial [RT and errors: n.s.]. Participants were also generally
more accurate but not significantly faster for the slow temporal range [RT: n.s.; errors: F(1,15)
=6.3, P=.02]. Finally, as in Experiment 1, participants were generally faster for the same
direction (rr/ff) target pattern [RT: F(1,15)=5.5, P=.03; errors: n.s.].
As in Experiment 1, the temporal-range priming effect was larger when the target also remained
the same [Temporal RangeTarget, RT: F(1,15)=27.8, P<.001; errors: F(1,15)=4.4, P=.05].
Despite this interaction, the effect of frequency range on response time was still significant for
trials in which the target changed [same target trials, RT: t(15)=5.9, P<.001; errors: t(15)=2.9,
P=.01; different target trials, RT: t(15)=2.6, P=.02; errors: n.s.; Fig. 3A].
The priming effect for temporal range also held for both the fast range [RT: t(15)=4.0, P=.001;
errors: n.s.] and the slow range [RT: t(15)=4.0, P=.001; errors: n.s.]. The interaction was nonsignificant (Fig. 3B).
With regard to absolute pitch, four of the participants were within one semitone of the correct
note names on the simple identification test at the end of the experimental session. When
absolute pitch was added as a between-subjects variable to the 2222 ANOVA, no main
effects of absolute pitch were found, and this variable did not interact with any of the other
reported effects, including the priming effect for temporal range.
Experiment 2 demonstrated that when listeners have just identified a target pattern in a given
temporal range, they will be faster to identify another target pattern in that same temporal range.
These patterns are similar to those of Robertson (1996, Experiment 2) and the current
Experiment 1. Again, the most important result for our purposes is the main effect of temporal
range; participants were (107 ms) faster to identify which of their two targets had been
presented when the target was presented in the same temporal range as in the preceding trial.
This effect occurred for both the fast and slow temporal ranges, and regardless of whether the
specific target pattern changed or remained the same (Fig. 3).
4. General discussion
4.1. Localglobal, highlow, and fastslow: similarities and differences
In this paper we have introduced two sets of stimuli that can serve as auditory analogues of the
Navon (1977) localglobal hierarchical stimuli so often used in visual perception research.
Experiment 1 demonstrated a priming effect based on frequency range: attending to a target in
one frequency range of the stimulus primes the listener for a target in the same frequency range
on the subsequent trial. Experiment 2 demonstrated a priming effect based on temporal range:
attending to a target in one temporal range of the stimulus primes the listener for a target in the
same temporal range on the subsequent trial.
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One of the strengths of these auditory stimuli is that, like the visual stimuli, participants are
not explicitly directing attention to the high/low or fast/slow dimensions; they are identifying
one of two three-tone target sequences, just as in the visual task participants are often
identifying one of two target letters. A difference that emerged between the two current
experiments was the effect of same versus different target. In Robertsons (1996, Experiment
2) hierarchical letter experiment and in the current Experiment 1, a main effect of target was
found, such that participants were slower to respond to a target pattern that had been presented
on the preceding trial (compare the two leftmost bars of Fig. 2A with the rightmost). This effect
was not observed in Experiment 2 (Fig. 3A). One reason for this difference may have been the
timing of the two experiments. Robertson (1996) found that the main effect of target identity
(a slower response to a repeating target) decreased with longer ITIs. In our experiments, the
mean trial lengths (given stimulus duration and mean RT) for the HighLow and FastSlow
stimuli were 3805 and 3998 ms, respectively. If the two tasks were both associated with an
inhibition of same target and/or response that diminished over time, the target effect would
have been observed more readily in Experiment 1 than Experiment 2.
Another interesting difference between the three stimuli concerns the main effects of spatial
frequency range, frequency range, and temporal range. Navon (1977) introduced the concept
of global precedence, the idea that global information is processed before local information.
This idea has been widely disputed, especially based on evidence challenging global RT
advantages. The effect can change from an overall global advantage to a local one, depending
on the overall size of the stimuli (Kinchla & Wolfe, 1979), their size ratio (Kimchi & Palmer,
1982), and whether the stimuli are presented to the fovea or the periphery (Lamb & Robertson,
1988). In Experiment 1, the HighLow stimuli were associated with an overall advantage for
the high frequency range compared to the low frequency range, despite the fact that the
frequencies were corrected for loudness (compare the two rightmost bars of Fig. 2B to the
leftmost). Although a significant priming effect of frequency range occurred for both the high
and low ranges, the effect for the high range was marginally larger. In Experiment 2, the Fast
Slow stimuli were not associated with an overall advantage for either the fast or slow temporal
ranges in terms of response time, and the priming effects of temporal range were highly similar
for both ranges (Fig. 3B). However, participants made fewer errors for the slow temporal range,
despite the lack of a response time effect. These results suggest, given the parameters of the
current studies, that participants may have been biased towards high frequency (local) ranges
and slow temporal (global) ranges. Future research might attempt to manipulate the local or
global advantage in these stimuli by varying the absolute frequency and temporal ranges
chosen. As with the Navon stimuli, the RT advantages seen with the auditory stimuli may prove
rather malleable with variations in stimulus parameters.
4.2. Previous work demonstrating attention to auditory frequency and time

Although the HighLow and FastSlow stimuli were inspired by the Navon stimuli and, in
particular, the priming design of Robertson (1996), the results of the current two experiments
are also of interest purely as studies of auditory attention. We briefly review the relevant work
on attention to frequency and time in the auditory modality, and discuss how the current studies
complement this literature.
4.2.1. Attention to auditory frequencyThe primary method that has been used to
demonstrate attentional effects on the processing of frequency has been the probe-signal
method of Greenberg and Larkin (1968) and Larkin and Greenberg (1970). In this method
the participant is led to expect a tone of a particular frequency (the primary) and must choose
which of two temporal intervals contains a near-threshold tone embedded in noise. Participants
are presented with the expected primary frequency on the majority of trials, but are occasionally
presented with unexpected frequencies (probes) as well. The primary frequency is detected
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best, followed by probes that are roughly within a half critical band of the primary frequency.
More distant probes are detected poorly. In some cases the expected frequency is the same
throughout the experiment, and in others is established by cues of various types presented
before each trial (Hafter, Schlauch, & Tang, 1993;Hbner & Hafter, 1995;Macmillan &
Schwartz, 1975;Scharf, Quigley, Aoki, Peachey, & Reeves, 1987;Schlauch & Hafter, 1991).
These cues need not be informative in order for frequency facilitation to occur, which suggests
that exogenous or automatic as well as endogenous or controlled mechanisms may be involved
(Green & McKeown, 2001).
More recent methods investigating attention to frequency have manipulated cue validity, interstimulus interval (ISI) between cue and target, and task, using tones presented suprathreshold.
For instance, Mondor and Bregman (1994) found that a valid frequency cue improved
performance on a duration discrimination task for ISIs up to 1500 ms. A similar facilitation
for validly cued frequencies has been reported for other orthogonal tasks, such as intensity
discrimination (Mondor & Lacey, 2001;Ward, 1997;Ward & Mori, 1996) and rise-time
discrimination (Mondor, Zatorre, & Terrio, 1998). Attention has also been given to determining
the time course of this facilitation and under what circumstances it reverses to inhibition with
longer ISIs (Mondor, Breau, & Milliken, 1998;Mondor, Hurlburt, & Gammell, 2003;Prime &
Ward, 2002).
The present Experiment 1 extends this work in auditory attention in three respects. First, the
highlow stimuli introduced a new dimension (the discrimination of three-tone pitch patterns)
that is orthogonal to frequency but nonetheless is affected by a manipulation of same versus
different frequency. Secondly, the experiment incorporated a design in which a response to all
stimuli was required, as each one served simultaneously as prime and probe. This is in contrast
to the probe-signal method and the majority of other studies that have examined attention to
frequency (but see Prime & Ward, 2002, Experiment 1; Mondor, Hurlburt, & Thorne, 2003)
and allowed for the comparison and interaction of frequency effects and response effects.
Finally, the experiment provides additional support for the exogenous component of frequencybased attention; stimuli in our experiment included same-frequency and different-frequency
transitions with equal probability. In other words, there was no cue validity of the prime. Thus,
the participant gains no advantage by adopting an explicit, endogenous strategy to attend to
the primed range (also see Green & McKeown, 2001;Mondor, Hurlburt, & Gammell, 2003).
4.2.2. Attention to timeThe majority of the attention literature in both vision and audition
includes a temporal attention component; all studies that incorporate a cue and a target, with
either a constant or systematically manipulated ISI, introduce temporal expectations about
when the target will occur (see Jones, 2001 for discussion). Mechanisms of temporal attention
per se have been explored in at least two different genres of experiment. The first has been
concerned with rhythmic sequences of auditory events and how the temporal relationships
between events affects the perception of subsequent events in the sequence (i.e. Dynamic
Attending Theory; Drake et al., 2000;Jones & Boltz, 1989). A second experimental technique
employs a temporal analogue of the Posner (1980) spatial cueing task; participants can be
effectively cued by a visual symbol to attend to a specific point in timeone of two temporal
intervals following the cue (Coull, Frith, Bchel, & Nobre, 2000;Coull & Nobre, 1998;Griffin,
Miniussi, & Nobre, 2002;Miniussi, Wilding, Coull, & Nobre, 1999; for review see Nobre,
2001).
In contrast, the present Experiment 2 demonstrated priming of temporal ranges, not points in
time. Every sound in the experiment began 2500 ms after the response from the preceding trial,
and thus any temporal expectancy about when the stimulus would begin was constant.
Similarly, every sound in the experiment was an isochronous sequence of nine 100-ms tones,
and thus any temporal expectation about the sequences length and internal temporal structure
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was also constant. What Experiment 2 demonstrated was priming of temporal scalethe width
of the temporal window (300 or 900 ms) over which relevant information would be presented.
We are unaware of any previous experiment in which this was demonstrated. Our result
complements previous work in music theory and music psychology suggesting that listeners
can appreciate musical structure on various levels within a temporal hierarchy, or what
Bharucha (1984) referred to as an event hierarchy (Cooper & Meyer, 1960;Drake,
1998;Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983;Narmour, 1999;Schenker, 1935;Tillmann & Bigand,
2004).
4.3. Previous approaches to auditory localglobal structure
Previous approaches to auditory localglobal processing have largely been pursued within the
music cognition literature, and largely stem from a study by Bever and Chiarello (1974) in
which musically trained participants demonstrated better discrimination between old and new
melodies when presented to the right ear, whereas the musically nave were better when the
melodies were presented to the left ear. The authors suggested that the musicians adopted a
more analytic strategy, which resulted in an advantage for the left hemisphere and right ear.
Later work has attempted to map local and global to two hypothesized levels of representation
for melody: scale and contour. This distinction was originally proposed by Dowling (1978)
and has received some support at a cognitive level in subsequent work on memory for
previously heard melodic patterns (see Dowling & Harwood, 1986, for an early review). Scale
refers to the specific set of pitches or tones (7 of 12 semitones of the octave) that are used to
construct a melody in Western tonal-harmonic music, along with the set of intervals that can
be created between these tones. This is sometimes referred to as a more local representation
of melody. Contour refers to the overall pattern of ups and downs in a melody and is sometimes
considered to be more global. Experiments invoking the representation of scale versus
contour typically include the presentation of two melodies in a samedifferent task. For the
different items, one tone of the melody is changed, either such that both interval and contour
have been changed, or such that the interval on the scale has been disrupted but the contour
preserved. These stimuli have been used extensively in behavioral studies (Peretz, 1987;Peretz
& Morais, 1980,1987), neuropsychological studies (Ayotte, Peretz, Rousseau, Bard, &
Bojanowski, 2000;Ligeois-Chauvel, Peretz, Baba, Laguitton, & Chauvel, 1998;Peretz,
1990;Zatorre, 1985), and studies employing event-related potentials (Fujioka, Trainor, Ross,
Kakigi, & Pantev, 2004;Schiavetto, Cortese, & Alain, 1999;Trainor, McDonald, & Alain,
2002), with at best mixed results regarding the proposed hemispheric asymmetry.
One concern about the use of scale and contour as an auditory analogue for visual localglobal
stimuli is that it remains unclear what cognitive mechanisms are differentially involved when
discriminating melodies along these dimensions. Scale and contour are usually defined
methodologically in terms of the degree of precision of the pitch representation; a
representation of scale and intervals is more precise and local than a representation of
contour, which could be more fuzzy and global. On the other hand, descriptions of the
strategies that participants are believed to be using when attending to interval- versus contourchange often evoke a temporal mechanism: attending to intervals within a melody may involve
a more fine-grained temporal analysis than attending to contour, which may be accomplished
by one, wide temporal window. It is noteworthy in this regard that Bever and Chiarello
(1974) study demonstrated the right-ear, local bias in their musicians for the old and new
melody recognition just after they had been asked to identify whether a specific two-tone
sequence had been present in the same melody. Further, Peretz (1987) reported that when
conditions encourage a self-terminating, analytic search, different responses are made before
the melodies are complete, based on the first noticeable change, with a right-ear advantage.
Correspondingly, under conditions where the different responses primarily occur around
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melody offset, there is a left-ear advantage. This suggests to us that scale and contour may only
be an approximation of a more fundamental attentional mechanism in the auditory system,
perhaps related more directly to the temporal scale over which attention is directed.
A second set of concerns about using scale-contour stimuli as a measure of local and global
processing is that they are methodologically limited when compared to Navon stimuli. One
methodological strength of the Navon stimuli is that experimental tasks need not be explicitly
related to the localglobal structure of the stimuli. Depending on the specific experimental
question, the participant can be instructed to attend explicitly to either the local or global level
(directed-attention tasks) or to identify specific target letters regardless of whether they occur
at the local or global level (divided-attention tasks), making the localglobal structure of the
stimuli incidental from the perspective of the participants. This is not possible with the scalecontour method. One cannot create a stimulus feature (like a letter) to be presented at either
the scale or contour level of a melody. The scale-contour method thus cannot be modified into
either a directed attention or divided attention task on a single melody; it is only suitable for
samedifferent or old-new discrimination judgments for pairs of melodies, in which case issues
of response bias become more critical.
The other methodological strength of the Navon stimuli is that the letters presented at the local
and global levels are experimentally independent; the items at each level can be manipulated
orthogonally. This makes it possible to test the extent of independence between the two levels
with regard to information processing. For instance, although the local and global items are
experimentally independent and provide no information about each other, Navon (1977,
Experiment 3) found that global items interfered with the identification of local items, but not
vice versa. This observation would not have been compelling with a set of stimuli in which the
levels were not experimentally independent. The local and global levels of scale-contour
stimuli suffer from this lack of experimental independence; although an interval change with
preserved contour can be created, a contour change with preserved interval cannot be. Thus,
any local bias on an interval- and contour-discrimination task would not result in reduced
performance for the contour discriminations. This lack of experimental independence should
be a fundamental concern to researchers attempting to document selective deficits or
dissociations between local and global processing in the auditory modality (Foxton et al.,
2003;Mottron, Peretz, & Mnard, 2000).
4.4. Relevance to the Theory of Indispensable Attributes (TIA)
The current studies also support the notion of Kubovy and Van Valkenburg that frequency and
time are two indispensable attributes in audition Both experiments suggest that attention will
be directed towards the frequency or temporal scale of a stimulus exogenously, even when the
task is orthogonal and there is no benefit to the participants to attend to these dimensions.
In addition to its positive positions regarding the importance of frequency and time, TIA also
makes negative positions about the role of space in the perception of auditory objects. This is
not to say that there is no role for auditory spatial information in Kubovy and Van Valkenburgs
work; they argue that spatial information does play a role in an auditory where system, which
is in their view subservient to the visual where system. It is with regard to the auditory what
system that these authors argue for the importance of frequency and time, and not space.
A strong version of TIA would predict that auditory attention can be directed only along an
indispensable attribute. In fact, Kubovy and Van Valkenburg suggest an interesting
reinterpretation of early work in auditory selective attention (e.g. Broadbent, 1958;Cherry,
1953) in terms of frequencytime rather than space: although people are clearly capable of
attending to one voice in a crowded room, the mechanisms that permit this selection may not
be inherently spatial, but related to the spectral and temporal differences between the attended
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speaker (the figure) and everyone else (the ground). It is also noteworthy that early extensions
of visual attention designs to the auditory modality failed to demonstrate auditory attention
operating in space (e.g. Posner, 1978;Scharf et al., 1987, Introduction).
More recent work suggests that a weaker version of this prediction might hold: perhaps
attention is directed to the indispensable attributes of frequency and time automatically, even
when they are not relevant to the listeners goals (as was found in the current experiments). In
contrast, it may be the case that attention to auditory space depends on the presence of either
informative spatial cues or a task that requires the explicit representation of space. For example,
Spence and Driver (1994) found that auditory spatial cues affected an auditory spatial
discrimination task regardless of whether the cue was informative, suggesting that the
mechanism is at least in part unconscious or exogenous. However, spatial cues affected a pitch
discrimination task only when the cue was informative, suggesting a more conscious or
endogenous mechanism. This suggests that frequency may be automatically encoded during
any auditory attention task, whereas the encoding of auditory spatial information is dependent
on the specifics of the experimental procedure (see also Buchtel & Butter, 1988;Mondor &
Zatorre, 1995;Rhodes, 1987;Woods, Alain, Diaz, Rhodes, & Ogawa, 2001). To date, this
hypothesis has not received unequivocal support, however; Mondor, Zatorre, & Terrio
(1998, Experiment 2) found that even when performing a task on an orthogonal dimension,
both frequency and location cues influenced performance, even when they were uninformative.
We remain agnostic on the issue of auditory spatial attention, as the current experiments did
not contrast auditory space with frequency and time. Nevertheless, the similarities between our
results and the study they were designed to parallel (Robertson, 1996), are consistent with the
positive positions of TIA. In the auditory modality, attention can be oriented within the
dimensions of frequency and time. This appears to happen automatically or exogenously, i.e.
when there is no predictive value of target frequency or temporal range from trial to trial.
5. Conclusion
We have introduced two new kinds of auditory stimuli, one based on a frequency manipulation
(the HighLow stimuli) and the other based on a temporal manipulation (the FastSlow stimuli)
in order to examine selective attention to these two dimensions in the auditory modality.
Starting with the goal of creating auditory analogues of the Navon visual hierarchical letter
stimuli, these auditory dimensions were chosen because they are arguably fundamental to the
auditory system, and like spatial frequency, have been associated with hemispheric
asymmetries. The stimuli were used to demonstrate exogenous attentional persistence to the
dimensions of frequency and time, using a task that required a response on an orthogonal
variable to every prime and probe. The HighLow and FastSlow stimuli may prove useful in
future studies investigating parallels between the auditory and visual systems with regard to
localglobal processing and hemispheric asymmetry, as well as studies within the auditory
modality examining attention to what are arguably its two most fundamental dimensions.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Yea-Hung Chen, Nichola DesLauriers, Kathy Chiou, and Grace Hwang for assistance in recruiting and
testing participants, to Joseph Brooks for invaluable technical assistance, to Lynn Robertson and Richard Ivry for
helpful discussion, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Funding for this project was provided to
author AL (NIH-T32-MH62997). These studies were previously presented at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the
Psychonomic Society, Kansas City, MO.
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Fig 1. Priming design for Navon stimuli and two auditory analogues
(A) Navon stimuli are constructed such that a global letter is formed from local letters. In a
priming design involving Navon stimuli, two letters (e.g. A, E) serve as targets while two other
letters (H, S) serve as distracters. In trial n + 1, the target (indicated with a gray circle) is
presented at the same level as in trial n (same level transition), whereas in trial n + 2, the target
is not presented at the same level as in trial n + 1 (different level transition). Participants are
faster to identify the target when it is presented at the same level as in the preceding trial
(Robertson, 1996). (B) HighLow stimuli are constructed such that a three-tone pattern in a
relatively low auditory frequency range is presented with another pattern in a relatively high
auditory frequency range. In a priming design involving HighLow stimuli, two patterns (e.g.
risingrising, risingfalling) serve as targets while two other letters (fallingrising, falling
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falling) serve as distracters. In trial n + 1, the target is presented in the same frequency range
as in trial n, whereas in trial n + 2, the target is not presented in the same frequency range as
in trial n + 1. Participants are faster to identify the target when it is presented in the same
frequency range as in the preceding trial. (C) FastSlow stimuli are constructed such that a
slow pattern covering a relatively wide temporal window contains three fast patterns each
covering a relatively narrow temporal window. The target and distracter patterns are the same
as for the HighLow stimuli. In trial n + 1, the target is presented in the same temporal range
as in trial n, whereas in trial n + 2, the target is not presented in the same temporal range as in
trial n + 1. Participants are faster to identify the target when it is presented in the same temporal
range as in the preceding trial.

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Fig 2. Results of Experiment 1 (HighLow Stimuli)
(A) Attending to a target in one frequency range facilitates attention to a subsequent target in
the same range (lighter versus darker bars). This is true regardless of whether the target pattern
remains the same (left) or changes (right). (B) The frequency priming effect also occurs for
both the low range (left) and the high range (right). RTs (bars, left y-axis) are depicted in ms
relative to stimulus offset. Errors (points, right y-axis) are given as proportions. Error bars
represent standard error.

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Fig 3. Results of Experiment 2 (FastSlow Stimuli)
(A) Attending to a target in one temporal range facilitates attention to a subsequent target in
the same range (lighter versus darker bars). This is true regardless of whether the target pattern
remains the same (left) or changes (right). (B) The temporal priming effect also occurs for both
the slow range (left) and the fast range (right). RTs (bars, left y-axis) are depicted in ms relative
to stimulus offset. Errors (points, right y-axis) are given as proportions. Error bars represent
standard error.


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Published in final edited form as:

Auditory attention to frequency and time: an analogy to visual

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Two priming experiments demonstrated exogenous attentional persistence to the fundamental

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Justus and List

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In a subsequent experiment, which explored how levels might be primed independently of

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operating in spacetime (e.g. Bregman, 1990;Handel, 1989). Further, they introduced

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3.2. Results and discussion

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Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2007 September 20.

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4.2. Previous work demonstrating attention to auditory frequency and time

Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2007 September 20.

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Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2007 September 20.

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Cognition. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2007 September 20.

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Justus and List

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