Biology subjects

Cui, M. E.

Publications and source records attributed to Cui, M. E..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Age-Related Differences in the Lexical Priming Effect Can Be Predominantly Attributed to Differences in Response Bias

Age-related declines in visual perception challenge older adults ability to locate and identify objects in noisy (e.g., fog, glare, inadequate lighting) or cluttered visual environments. To compensate, older adults often increase reliance on contextual information, which could be helpful, but may also lead to increased risk for "false seeing" - reporting expected objects based on contextual information rather than those actually presented - a phenomenon that Jacoby et al., (2012) observed in older adults under challenging viewing conditions. However, it remains unaddressed whether such false seeing is driven by older adults elevated tendency to rely on context, or by age-related declines in visual perceptual processes. The current study addressed this issue by examining the lexical priming effects in 18 younger and 18 older adults (M = 21.4 years; M = 76.2 years) in Experiment 1, and 13 younger and 13 older adults (M = 21.2 years; M = 74.8 years) in Experiment 2 using a two-alternative, forced-choice (2AFC) paradigm, while controlling for age-related perceptual differences. On each trial, participants identified a visually degraded target word preceded by an identical, semantically related, or unrelated prime. We applied Signal Detection Theory to isolate perceptual sensitivity (d) and response bias (c). Results revealed that once stimulus parameters were adjusted to eliminate age-differences in performance when the prime was unrelated to the target, age-related differences in target identification in the related priming conditions were predominantly driven by age-related differences in response bias rather than in any residual age-differences in perceptual sensitivity. Public Significance StatementTo compensate for age-related losses in visual processes, older adults tend to rely more on the overall context provided by the visual scene to identify individual objects than do younger adults. Using a word priming task, our study found that older adults use of supporting context to correctly identify target words masked by visual noise persisted even when overall word identification performance (correctly identifying words independent of whether the context was supporting or misleading) was equated for both age groups. Understanding such age-relate differences in visual perception can inform interventions that would support older adults visual processing in daily perceptually challenging environments.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Attentional disengagement during external and internal distractions reduces neural speech tracking in background noise

Within-situation disengagement - the mental withdrawal during conversations in acoustically challenging environments - is a common experience of older people with hearing difficulties. Yet, most research on the neural mechanisms of attentional disengagement from speech listening has focused on the distraction by one competing speaker, whereas within-situation disengagement is often characterized by distraction towards external visual stimuli or internal thoughts and occurs in situations with ambient, multi-talker background masking. Across three electroencephalography (EEG) experiments in human participants of either sex, the current study examined how disengagement due to external and internal distractions affect the neural tracking of speech masked by different levels of multi-talker babble (speech in quiet, +6 dB, and -3 dB SNR). We observed enhanced early neural responses (<0.2 s) to the speech envelope for speech masked by background babble compared to speech in quiet (Experiments 1-3), suggesting stochastic facilitation. Importantly, neural tracking of the speech envelope was reduced when individuals were distracted by a visual-stimulus stream (Experiment 2) and by internal thought and imagination (Experiment 3). There were some indices suggesting the greatest disengagement-related decline in neural speech tracking occurs for the most difficult speech-masking condition, but this was not consistent across all measures. The current data show that disengagement due to external and internal distractions yield decreases in neural speech tracking, potentially suggesting converging neural pathways through which gain is downregulated in auditory cortex. These results indicate that disengagement from listening can be identified through non-invasive neural measures. SignificanceMany older adults with hearing difficulties mentally "tune out" during conversations in noisy environments, yet the neural mechanisms underlying this within-situation disengagement remain poorly understood. Across three electroencephalography experiments, we examined how external (visual) and internal (thought-based) distractions influence neural tracking of speech masked by multi-talker babble. We observed that attentional disengagement - whether induced by external stimuli or internal thoughts - reduced the brains tracking of the speech envelope. These findings demonstrate that listening disengagement can be objectively identified through neural measures and suggest a convergence in neural pathways through which both external and internal distractions down-regulate auditory gain, providing new insight into attentional control in challenging listening conditions.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Mobile Eye-Tracking Glasses Capture Ocular and Head Markers of Listening Effort

To extend the assessment of listening effort beyond a sound booth, we validated mobile eye-tracking glasses (Pupil Labs Neon) by comparing them to a stationary system (Eyelink DUO) in a controlled environment. We recorded eye movements, pupil size, and head movements from 26 young adults during a speech-in-noise task. When listening conditions became challenging, we observed reduced gaze dispersion and increased pupil sizes of similar magnitude from both devices, in addition to reduced head movements recorded solely by the mobile device. These findings suggest that mobile eye-trackers reliably capture listening effort, paving the path towards assessments in daily settings.

neuroscience↗