Auditory gist perception: an alternative to attentional selection of auditory streams?
The idea that the gist of a visual scene is perceived beforeattention is focused on the details of a particular object is becoming increasinglypopular. In the auditory system, on the other hand, it is typicallyassumed that the sensory signal is rst broken down into streamsand then attention is applied to select one of the streams. We considerevidence for an alternative: that, in close analogy with the visual system,the gist of an auditory scene is perceived and only afterwards attention ispaid to relevant constituents. We nd that much experimental evidenceis consistent with such a proposal, and we suggest some possibilities forgist representations.