Auditory Cues for Attention Management (Mpi Series in Biological Cybernetics, 51)

An exhaustible supply of mental resources necessitate that we are selective for what we attend to. Attention prioritizes what ought to be processed and what ignored, allocating valuable resources to selected information at the cost of unattended information elsewhere. For this purpose it is necessary to know the conditions that help the brain decide when attention should be paid, where to and to what information. This dissertation shows how auditory cues can support the management of limited attentional resources based on auditory characteristics. Auditory cues can increase the overall alertness, orient attention to unattended information, or manage attentional resources by informing of an upcoming task-switch and, therefore, indicate when to pay attention to which task.