@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{PassowWesterhausenHugdahletal.2014,
  author    = {Passow, Susanne and Westerhausen, Rene and Hugdahl, Kenneth and Wartenburger, Isabell and Heekeren, Hauke R. and Lindenberger, Ulman and Li, Shu-Chen},
  title     = {Electrophysiological correlates of adult age differences in attentional control of auditory processing},
  series = {Cerebral cortex},
  volume    = {24},
  journal   = {Cerebral cortex},
  number    = {1},
  publisher = {Oxford Univ. Press},
  address   = {Cary},
  issn      = {1047-3211},
  doi       = {10.1093/cercor/bhs306},
  pages     = {249 -- 260},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {In addition to sensory decline, age-related losses in auditory perception also reflect impairments in attentional modulation of perceptual saliency. Using an attention and intensity-modulated dichotic listening paradigm, we investigated electrophysiological correlates of processing conflicts between attentional focus and perceptual saliency in 25 younger and 26 older adults. Participants were instructed to attend to the right or left ear, and perceptual saliency was manipulated by varying the intensities of both ears. Attentional control demand was higher in conditions when attentional focus and perceptual saliency favored opposing ears than in conditions without such conflicts. Relative to younger adults, older adults modulated their attention less flexibly and were more influenced by perceptual saliency. Our results show, for the first time, that in younger adults a late negativity in the event-related potential (ERP) at fronto-central and parietal electrodes was sensitive to perceptual-attentional conflicts during auditory processing (N450 modulation effect). Crucially, the magnitude of the N450 modulation effect correlated positively with task performance. In line with lower attentional flexibility, the ERP waveforms of older adults showed absence of the late negativity and the modulation effect. This suggests that aging compromises the activation of the frontoparietal attentional network when processing the competing and conflicting auditory information.},
  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}
}