Eye position and the control of auditory attention.

In a binaural selective-listening task, subjects' performance was strongly influenced by the position of their eyes, Subjects remembered fewest words from the relevant message and made the most intrusion errors when looking in the direction of the irrelevant input. Looking away from the relevant message but in a direction from which no auditory input originated was not significantly different from looking toward the relevant input. As the speakers were arrayed along a vertical line, the results cannot be interpreted as reflecting activation of the cerebral hemispheres (unlike earlier related work). The results are discussed in terms of the control of auditory attention.