ATTENTION AND EVOKED OTOACOUSTIC EMISSIONS - ATTEMPTS AT CHARACTERIZATION OF INTERSUBJECT VARIATION

The present study has two aims: to define the visual attention effect on evoked otoacoustic emissions (EOAEs) found in several previous stud ies: a first experiment sought to determine the conditions necessary t o produce such an effect, and found that, neither the complexity nor t he duration of the task modified results obtained under attention cond itions. The second experiment sought to characterize the great intersu bject variation found in most visual attention studies; two possible e xplanations are discussed: medial efferent system activity, assessed t hrough the recording of otoacoustic emissions, or subject ''attention profile'' as drawn from a questionnaire.