A series of studies further explored the way in which irrelevant sound disrupts the serial recall of visually presented verbal sequences. The hypothesis that distinctiveness (stimulus mismatch) within auditory irrelevant sequences is a critical determinant of disruption of serial recall was tested. Experiment 1 showed that the degree of disruption was related to the degree of mismatch between successive stimuli. However, in Experiment 2, changes in 2 attributes of a stimulus produced less disruption than when only 1 was changed, suggesting mismatch alone was not the key factor. These results were reconciled with the changing-state hypothesis in Experiment 3 in which change and disruption were monotonically related up to the point at which mismatch created 2 streams. Object-based theories are able to explain this pattern of results.Short-term serial recall for visually presented sequences is impaired markedly by the presence of sound irrelevant to the task, even though participants are asked to ignore the sound (e.g.

Irrelevant background speech disrupts serial recall of visually presented lists of verbal material. Three experiments tested the hypothesis that the degree of disruption is dependent on the number of words heard (i.e. word dose) whilst the task was undertaken. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that more disruption is produced if the word dose is increased, thereby providing evidence to support the experimental hypothesis. It was concluded from the first two experiments that the word-dose effect might be the result of increasing the amount of changing-state information in the speech. The results of Experiment 3 supported this conclusion by showing an interaction between word dose and changing-state information. It was noted however that the results might be explained within the working memory account of the disruptive action of irrelevant speech. A further two experiments cast doubt on this possibility by failing to replicate the finding that the phonological similarity between heard and seen material affects the degree of interference (Salamé & Baddeley, 1982). The findings are discussed in relation to the changing state hypothesis of the irrelevant speech effect (e.g. Jones, Madden, & Miles, 1992).

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