Some listeners detect texture changes more readily when not actively attending

Evidence

Attention was not controlled for in the present setting, although subjects were instructed to attend to the stimulus. Some subjects reported improved detection of change, when not attending to the stimulus, suggesting that a dual-task paradigm would be interesting where attention can be assessed and controlled. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3345

Categorization

• QUESTION: Self-reported better change detection with inattention is intriguing — could align with pre-attentive statistical tracking or automatic deviance detection (MMN-like) that focused attention disrupts. Worth chasing literature on attention effects on texture/timbre change detection.
• XREF: Connects to the pre-attentive deviance-detection literature (mismatch negativity) and to research on passive vs. active listening in auditory scene analysis.