Intentional switching of auditory selective attention (ASA) in the context of electrophysiological data, such as those from the electroencephalography (EEG), has yet been little explored. However, the combination of both components could be extremely useful to further develop i.e. attention-steered hearing aids. ASA is the cognitive ability to focus on an auditory stimulus while ignoring other, irrelevant auditory stimuli. The EEG measures the electrical activity of the cerebral cortex via electrodes on the head, providing a direct measure of the neural activity of the brain. Integrating EEG measurements into a binaural ASA paradigm with the focus on the intentional attention switching process itself and the neural brain activity during induced auditory attention switches is the aim of this thesis.

For data collection, 25 subjects participated in a listening test which included a listening comprehension task divided into two parts: passive and active. During the passive part, the subjects had to listen to cues and stimuli from four spatial directions. In the active part, after an acoustic directional cue, two stimuli were played simultaneously, with one stimulus coming from the cued target direction and a distractor stimulus coming from any other direction. Subjects then had to perform a categorisation task. EEG data have been recorded throughout the listening experiment. Finally, combined analyses of the behavioural and EEG data have been performed.

The developed paradigm shows comparable results to other ASA paradigms and can therefore be used in future studies to investigate intentional auditory attention switches in behavioural and neural response data. The EEG dataset has been analysed by examining the waveforms of event-related potentials (ERPs) and performing single-trial EEG analyses. The ERP waveforms show effects both between passive and active listening and between different attentional conditions. Thus, intentional auditory selective attention is visible, at least to some extent, in the brain’s neural responses, although a unique wave characteristic has not yet been found.

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