Salient sounds distort time perception and production

Abstract

The auditory world is often cacophonous, with some sounds capturing attention and distracting us from our goals. Despite the universality of this experience, many questions remain about how and why sound captures attention, how rapidly behavior is disrupted, and how long this interference lasts. Here we use a novel measure of behavioral disruption to test two predictions made by models of auditory salience. First, models predict that goal-directed behavior is disrupted at points in time that feature a high degree of spectrotemporal change. We find that behavioral disruption is precisely time-locked to the onset of distracting sound events: participants tapping to a metronome speed up immediately after the onset of distractors. Moreover, this response is greater for more salient sounds (larger amplitude) and sound changes (greater pitch shift). Second, models predict that different auditory features are combined into an overarching salience map. We find that the time course of behavioral disruption is highly similar after acoustically disparate sound events, suggesting overlapping mechanisms of attentional capture: both sound onsets and pitch shifts of continuous background sounds speed responses at 750 ms, with these effects dying out by 1750 ms. These temporal distortions can be observed using only data from the first trial across participants. A potential mechanism underlying these results is that arousal increases after distracting sound events, leading to an expansion of time perception, and causing participants to misjudge when their next movement should begin. Significance StatementThe noisy world constantly challenges our pursuit of goals. When driving, for example, a cacophony of mechanical, musical, and conversational sounds surrounds us and can wrench our focus away from the road. While the physiological signatures of auditory attentional capture are well researched, we know surprisingly little about how sound affects moment-to-moment behavior: How quickly do sounds affect our actions, how transient is the effect, and how is action affected by changes in sound properties? Here we use a synchronized tapping paradigm to show that loud sounds and large acoustic changes cause rapid distortions in time perception. However, these distortions were corrected within 2 seconds, showing that goal-directed behavior is transiently vulnerable yet ultimately resilient in the face of distraction.