Short-term cognitive fatigue of spatial selective attention after face-to-face conversations in virtual noisy environments

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Main Authors: Hládek, Ľuboš, Majdak, Piotr, Baumgartner, Robert
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Hládek, Ľuboš
Majdak, Piotr
Baumgartner, Robert
author_facet Hládek, Ľuboš
Majdak, Piotr
Baumgartner, Robert
contents Spatial selective attention is an important asset for communication in cocktail party situations but may be compromised by short-term cognitive fatigue. Here we tested whether an effortful conversation in a highly ecological setting depletes task performance in an auditory spatial selective attention task. Young participants with normal hearing performed the task before and after (1) having a real dyadic face-to-face conversation on a free topic in a virtual reverberant room with simulated interfering conversations and background babble noise at 72 dB SPL for 30 minutes, (2) passively listening to the interfering conversations and babble noise, or (3) having the conversation in quiet. Self-reported perceived effort and fatigue increased after conversations in noise and passive listening relative to the reports after conversations in quiet. In contrast to our expectations, response times in the attention task decreased, rather than increased, after conversation in noise and accuracy did not change systematically in any of the conditions on the group level. Unexpectedly, we observed strong training effects between the individual sessions in our within-subject design even after one hour of training on a different day.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_09479
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Short-term cognitive fatigue of spatial selective attention after face-to-face conversations in virtual noisy environments
Hládek, Ľuboš
Majdak, Piotr
Baumgartner, Robert
Audio and Speech Processing
Sound
Spatial selective attention is an important asset for communication in cocktail party situations but may be compromised by short-term cognitive fatigue. Here we tested whether an effortful conversation in a highly ecological setting depletes task performance in an auditory spatial selective attention task. Young participants with normal hearing performed the task before and after (1) having a real dyadic face-to-face conversation on a free topic in a virtual reverberant room with simulated interfering conversations and background babble noise at 72 dB SPL for 30 minutes, (2) passively listening to the interfering conversations and babble noise, or (3) having the conversation in quiet. Self-reported perceived effort and fatigue increased after conversations in noise and passive listening relative to the reports after conversations in quiet. In contrast to our expectations, response times in the attention task decreased, rather than increased, after conversation in noise and accuracy did not change systematically in any of the conditions on the group level. Unexpectedly, we observed strong training effects between the individual sessions in our within-subject design even after one hour of training on a different day.
title Short-term cognitive fatigue of spatial selective attention after face-to-face conversations in virtual noisy environments
topic Audio and Speech Processing
Sound
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09479