Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate, the relationship between attention switching time (ST) and psychological distance between two spatial locations in auditory space through the use of reaction time (RT) as an index. In this experiment, 10 subjects were asked to judge whether the frequencies of two tone pips presented succesively, SS and SC, were the same or different under five conditions (NS, S1, S2, S3, S4), each of which differed in psychological distance. Upon hearing presented binaurally tone pips, which differed from each other in intensity, the spatial locations pinpointed. Then, the change in locations of SS and SC was used for the assessment of psychological distance between these two spatial location. The results showed that the RT became longer as the psychological distance increased; thus the ST changed in accordance with the psychological distance between SS and SC. This supports the Continuous-analogue hypothesis of attention switching rather than Discrete hypothesis.
