A multilingual preregistered replication of the semantic mismatch effect on serial recall.

Abstract

Visual-verbal serial recall is disrupted when task-irrelevant background speech has to be ignored. Contrary to previous suggestion, it has recently been shown that the magnitude of disruption may be accentuated by the semantic properties of the irrelevant speech. Sentences ending with unexpected words that did not match the preceding semantic context were more disruptive than sentences ending with expected words. This particular instantiation of a deviation effect has been termed the semantic mismatch effect. To establish a new phenomenon, it is necessary to show that the effect can be independently replicated and does not depend on specific boundary conditions such as the language of the stimulus material. Here we report a preregistered replication of the semantic mismatch effect in which we examined the effect of unexpected words in four different languages (English, French, German, and Swedish) across four different laboratories.Participants performed a serial recall task while ignoring sentences with expected or unexpected words that were recorded using text-to-speech software. Independent of language, sentences ending with unexpected words were more disruptive than sentences ending with expected words. In line with previous results, there was no evidence of habituation of the semantic mismatch effect in the form of a decrease in disruption with repeated exposure to the occurrence of unexpected words. The successful replication and extension of the effect to different languages indicates the expression of a general and robust mechanism that reacts to violations of expectancies based on the semantic content of the irrelevant speech.

Cognitive performance in open-plan office acoustic simulations: Effects of room acoustics and semantics but not spatial separation of sound sources

“…Therefore, the finding of higher err% in native vs. foreign speech conditions is hard to explain using signal-based spectro-temporal/changing-state considerations. Instead, pending future investigations, these findings suggest a semantic effect wherein increased attentional capture during serial recall can be expected for semantically meaningful native speech, along with possible contribution due to automatic semantic processing during serial recall that is proposed in some recent studies [25,26,31,33]. The role of such factors in ISE for native vs.…”

“…This is reflected in the current acoustic standards for OPOs, which include speech transmission index (STI) reduction across workstations as one of the primary strategies for implementing better room acoustics [9] and overall acoustic comfort [22]. However, as per the duplex-mechanism account of the ISE during visual-verbal serial recall (section I.A.1), while meaningful speech can capture attention away from the focal task (e.g., due to emotional or personal relevance to speech, taboo words) [23][24][25][26], the role of meaningful speech is considered irrelevant for interference-by-process since it is presumed that the serial recall task does not require extensive semantic processing ( [27]; review in [6]).…”

“…Furthermore, emerging evidence points towards automatic semantic processing of irrelevant sounds during serial recall, which can disrupt task performance when contextual expectations are not met, as in categorical deviation (e.g., number in a word sequence) [31][32][33], or due to semantic mismatch (e.g., unexpected ending to a sentence) [19,25,34]. Unlike attentional capture, the categorical deviation and semantic mismatch effects (both arguably semantic effects) have been shown to be immune to top-down control, e.g., immune to habituation over the course of experiment [25,26,33,34], shown to occur for deviants that are not relevant for the participants [25,26,31], with categorical deviation additionally being immune to foreknowledge about the deviant [31,32] and being unrelated to working memory capacity [32].…”

“…These effects are hence being proposed as being functionally separate from the current formulations of attentional capture in serial recall [26,31,33]. Besides, physiological evidence from a pupillometry based study of auditory attention also suggests that meaningful irrelevant speech in one's native language while performing a cognitive task consumes more attentional resources than meaningless speech in a foreign language [35].…”

Covert detection of own-name and semantic violations in task-irrelevant speech, in a realistic Virtual Café

“…The basic rationale is that finding an indication for detection of semantic violations, implies that the entire speech was monitored for its semantic content, in line with late-selection models of attention (Parmentier et al, 2018). As in the case of detecting ones’ own name in task-irrelevant speech, behavioral studies offer conflicting results regarding the degree to which the presence of semantic violations in task irrelevant speech interfere with performance of a main task (Bentin, Kutas and Hillyard, 1995; Röer et al ., 2019, 2021;, vs. Deacon, 2000; Aydelott, Jamaluddin and Nixon Pearce, 2015; Röer et al ., 2017; Parmentier et al ., 2020; Röer and Cowan, 2021). Hence here, too, monitoring neural and physiological responses to semantic violations in the barista-stream provides a more direct, and ecologically relevant, metric.…”