Lauren Petley

Education Background

Ph.D. - 2010 University of Ottawa

Courses Taught

• Introduction to Psychology
• Physiological Psychology
• Perception
• Cognitive Neuroscience

Research Interests

Camping alone under the stars, it may not be difficult to focus on your thoughts or a good book, but in complex auditory scenes like a noisy cafeteria, your ability to focus on the task at hand is a remarkable feat. Yet more remarkable is the fact that your attention can be drawn to important events in your environment despite this focus, even though this attention switch can happen after the relevant event has ended. These two capacities are attributed to different, yet complementary systems that operate in the brain. One system, constrained by the capacity limits of our conscious awareness, optimally processes environmental events that are within the current focus of selective attention. The other, which operates at a pre-conscious level and has a larger capacity, processes all environmental stimuli to some degree, and alerts the conscious system if potentially important events are detected. Only through the operation of these two systems can we maintain both focus and receptiveness to unattended events.

At the Hearing and Attention Lab, it is our goal to understand these two systems and how they interact, especially in the domain of hearing. In order to deepen our understanding of how attended and unattended stimuli are processed, we leverage the power of electroencephalography (EEG), which offers a unique window into the neural processing of unattended events. In addition to studying the process of attention itself, we study how it is influenced by factors related to both the listener (such as working memory capacity and motivation) and the auditory scene. Speech as a stimulus is particularly fascinating, owing to inconsistent evidence regarding whether attention is required for semantic information to be processed.

Members of the Hearing and Attention Lab also engage in interdisciplinary applied research aimed at supporting and improving the application of EEG in clinical contexts related to hearing. 

Patents

• D’Arcy, RCN, Weaver, D, Ghosh Hajra, S, Liu, C, Sculthorpe, L. Cognitive function assessment in a patient. United States Patent #9,339,227.
• Petley, L, Gandhi, S, Carlile, S, Akram, S. Ear-worn electronic device incorporating motor brain-computer interface. United States Patent # 10,582,316.

Publications

Publications (last 5 years)

• Petley, L, Brzac, J, Meyers, L & Gascoyne, SJ. (2025) Validating the Directional Command Flanker Task: an auditory analog of the Arrows Flanker. Behavior Research Methods, 57, 324.
• Petley, L, Gascoyne, SJ, & Hoffman, M. (2025) Engaging stories for the study of attention and audition (ESSAA): a database of engagement scores for narrative stimuli. Auditory Perception & Cognition 8(2), 157-168.
• Kojima, K, Lin, Y, Petley, L, Clevenger, N, Bodik, M & Moore, DR. (2024). Childhood listening and associated cognitive difficulties persist into adolescence. Ear and Hearing 45(5), 1252-1263.
• Petley, L, Blankenship, C, Hunter, LL, Stewart, HJ, Lin, L & Moore, DR. (2024). Amplitude modulation perception and cortical evoked potentials in children with listening difficulties and their typically-developing peers. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 67, 633-656.
• Petley, L, Hunter, LL, Motlagh Zadeh, L, Stewart, HJ, Sloat, NT, Perdew, A, Lin, Li & Moore, DR. (2021). Listening difficulties in children with normal audiograms: Relation to hearing and cognition. Ear and Hearing 42(6), 1640-1655.

Conference Presentations (last 5 years)

• Petley, L. (2025). Challenging listening conditions increase the persistence of cognitive control in an auditory flanker task. Oral presentation at the 24th annual Auditory Perception Cognition and Action Meeting in Denver, CO.
• Petley, L. (2025). Listening in time, space, and frequency: adaptation of the Attention Network Test to the auditory modality. Oral presentation at the 66th annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society in Denver, CO.
• Petley, L, Wicks, T, Blankenship, C, Moore, D, Meyers, L, Chatwin, J & Miller, L. (2024). Chirp Speech: a novel approach for studying disordered speech processing in children. Oral presentation at the inaugural Manchester Centre for Audiology and Deafness Clinical Audiology Papers conference in Manchester, UK.
• Petley, L, Gascoyne, SJ, & McCarty, C. (2024). Engaging stories for the study of attention and audition: an introduction to the ESSAA database. Poster presentation at the 23rd annual Auditory Perception, Cognition, and Action Meeting in New York, NY.
• Petley, L, Brzac, J, Gascoyne, SJ, Meyers, L, Chatwin, J. (2024). Resolving conflict in the auditory modality: spectrotemporal characterization of a speech-based flanker task. Poster presentation at the 65th annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society in New York, NY.
• Petley, L, Meyers, L, Blankenship, C, Chatwin, J, Miller, L, & Moore, DR. (2024). Exploring speech-evoked N400 responses in children with listening difficulties. Poster presentation at the 51st annual scientific and technology conference of the American Auditory Society in Scottsdale, AZ.
• Petley, L, Gascoyne, SJ, & McCarty, C. (2024). Engaging stories for the study of attention and audition: an introduction to the ESSAA database. Poster presentation at the 51st annual scientific and technology conference of the American Auditory Society in Scottsdale, AZ.
• Petley, L, Hunter, LL, & Moore, DR. (2023). “Auditory and cognitive factors in listening across the lifespan: Beyond the audiogram.” Invited talk at the 2023 meeting of the American Speech Language and Hearing Association. Boston, MA.
• Petley, L, Brzac, JR & Meyers, L. (2022). Validating a novel auditory flanker task. Oral presentation at the 63rd annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society in Boston, MA.
• Petley, L, Brzac, JR & Meyers, L. (2022). Examining the independence of flanker and Simon effects in the auditory modality. Poster presentation at the 63rd annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society in Boston, MA.
• Kojima, K, Lin, L, Bodik, M, Petley, L & Moore, DR. (2022). Childhood listening and associated cognitive difficulties persist through early adolescence. Poster presentation at the 49th annual meeting of the American Auditory Society in Scottsdale, AZ.
• Wicks, TT, Blankenship, CM, Miller, LM, Moore, DR & Petley, L. (2021). Investigating listening difficulties in children using Chirp Speech EEG. Poster presentation at the 48th annual meeting of the American Auditory Society, online.