@article{PassowWesterhausenWartenburgeretal.2012,
  author    = {Passow, Susanne and Westerhausen, Rene and Wartenburger, Isabell and Hugdahl, Kenneth and Heekeren, Hauke R. and Lindenberger, Ulman and Li, Shu-Chen},
  title     = {Human aging compromises attentional control of auditory perception},
  series = {Psychology and aging},
  volume    = {27},
  journal   = {Psychology and aging},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {American Psychological Association},
  address   = {Washington},
  issn      = {0882-7974},
  doi       = {10.1037/a0025667},
  pages     = {99 -- 105},
  year      = {2012},
  abstract  = {Older adults often experience hearing difficulties in multitalker situations. Attentional control of auditory perception is crucial in situations where a plethora of auditory inputs compete for further processing. We combined an intensity-modulated dichotic listening paradigm with attentional manipulations to study adult age differences in the interplay between perceptual saliency and attentional control of auditory processing. When confronted with two competing sources of verbal auditory input, older adults modulated their attention less flexibly and were more driven by perceptual saliency than younger adults. These findings suggest that aging severely impairs the attentional regulation of auditory perception.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{PassowMuellerWesterhausenetal.2013,
  author    = {Passow, Susanne and M{\"u}ller, Maike and Westerhausen, Rene and Hugdahl, Kenneth and Wartenburger, Isabell and Heekeren, Hauke R. and Lindenberger, Ulman and Li, Shu-Chen},
  title     = {Development of attentional control of verbal auditory perception from middle to late childhood - comparisons to healthy aging},
  series = {Developmental psychology},
  volume    = {49},
  journal   = {Developmental psychology},
  number    = {10},
  publisher = {American Psychological Association},
  address   = {Washington},
  issn      = {0012-1649},
  doi       = {10.1037/a0031207},
  pages     = {1982 -- 1993},
  year      = {2013},
  abstract  = {Multitalker situations confront listeners with a plethora of competing auditory inputs, and hence require selective attention to relevant information, especially when the perceptual saliency of distracting inputs is high. This study augmented the classical forced-attention dichotic listening paradigm by adding an interaural intensity manipulation to investigate developmental differences in the interplay between perceptual saliency and attentional control during auditory processing between early and middle childhood. We found that older children were able to flexibly focus on instructed auditory inputs from either the right or the left ear, overcoming the effects of perceptual saliency. In contrast, younger children implemented their attentional focus less efficiently. Direct comparisons of the present data with data from a recently published study of younger and older adults from our group suggest that younger children and older adults show similar levels of performance. Critically, follow-up comparisons revealed that younger children's performance restrictions reflect difficulties in attentional control only, whereas older adults' performance deficits also reflect an exaggerated reliance on perceptual saliency. We conclude that auditory attentional control improves considerably from middle to late childhood and that auditory attention deficits in healthy aging cannot be reduced to a simple reversal of child developmental improvements.},
  language  = {en}
}