Sensory processing sensitivity is associated with state-dependent stabilization of perceptual organization in auditory streaming

Description

Hirohito M Kondo and Daniel Pressnitzer report, in 2026, an experiment linking a sensitivity trait to how listeners hear ambiguous sound patterns. In auditory streaming, repeating tone triplets can be heard either as one stream or as two separate streams, and perception flips between them. Whether personality shapes those flips was the question.

Forty-eight participants reported their perception continuously while listening. People scoring higher on sensory processing sensitivity, a trait of strong responsiveness to sensory input, held the two-stream perception longer and switched less overall. Detailed modelling suggested the trait did not simply bias hearing toward separation. Instead, once the separated organisation formed, it became more stable and less likely to end. The authors connect the pattern to stronger weighting of regularity cues.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13319501