Habituation of the irrelevant sound effect: Evidence for an attentional theory of short-term memory disruption.

Abstract

Immediate serial recall is seriously disrupted by to-be-ignored sound. According to the embedded-processes model, auditory distractors elicit attentional orienting that draws processing resources away from the recall task. The model predicts that interference should be attenuated after repeated exposure to the auditory distractors. Previous failures to observe evidence for habituation can be explained by assuming that habituation to complex distractor features depends on the availability of working memory resources. Here we demonstrate that the irrelevant sound effect is attenuated after passive listening to the auditory distractors during a preexposure phase prior to the serial recall task. Experiment 1 shows that the irrelevant sound effect is abolished after 20 min of passive listening to the distractor speech. Experiments 2-4 show that irrelevant sound interference is significantly reduced after listening to distractors for 45 s. As predicted by the habituation hypothesis, an attenuation of interference occurs only when the distractor material matches the material played in the preexposure phase (Experiment 5). The results support an attentional conceptualization of the irrelevant sound effect.

Distraction of Mental Arithmetic by Background Speech

“…The finding of a difference between ascending and descending numbers condition is more consistent with the attentional capture account (Bell et al, 2012;Cowan, 1995;Röer, Bell, Dentale, & Buchner, 2011) than with the interference-by-content account on the assumption that ascending numbers may be regarded as more task-relevant and more familiar than descending sequences whereby the attentional system is selectively more responsive to this input. The current experiment is inconclusive as to whether the competition-by-action or the attention capture account is the better explanation.…”

“…Interference-by-content views, however, experience difficulties RUNNING HEAD: DISTRACTION OF ARITHMETIC BY BACKGROUND SPEECH 4 explaining why, for example, non-phonological sounds such as tones, office noise and instrumental music also impair short-term serial recall performance (Jones & Macken, 1993;Perham, Banbury, & Jones, 2007a;Tremblay, Macken, & Jones, 2001). The attentional capture view assumes that sound captures attention away from the focal task, thereby reducing the level of attentional resources available for any demanding focal task (Bell, Röer, Dentale, & Buchner, 2012;Cowan, 1995). This attentional capture view is consistent with the observation that people habituate to the disruptive effects of background sound (Bell et al, 2012;Röer, Bell, & Buchner, 2014a, 2014b.…”

Boundaries of semantic distraction: Dominance and lexicality act at retrieval

“…The findings reported here are difficult to reconcile with the view that speech disrupts short-term memory of semantic information because it captures attention (Bell, Röer, Dentale, & Buchner, 2012;Buchner Mehl, Rothermund, & Wentura, 2006). On this account (Cowan, 1995), acoustic changes-in-state from one irrelevant item to the next causes an orienting response (OR) away from the focal task regardless of the processes the focal task engages.…”

“…For instance, both serial recall (e.g., Jones & Macken, 1993) and free recall (e.g., Beaman, 2004;Sörqvist et al, 2010) are impaired by speech presented during a retention interval between encoding and retrieval, as well as when presented at study/encoding and retrieval/test (Experiment 1). Because of these findings, we argue that natural speech (without any apparent pop-out element) does not disrupt free recall of semantic information due to an attentional blink that prevents successful encoding (Broadbent, 1983) or because it captures attention from the focal task (Bell et al, 2012).…”

Please silence your cell phone: Your ringtone captures other people′s attention

“…simple sequences of equally long monosyllabic words with a constant gap of silence between two distractors) often failed to find habituation effects. [9,10] Experiments using distractor material that is closer to real-world environments, however, such as office noise [11] or naturalistic speech [12,13] have produced evidence of an attentional disruption by the auditory distractors and a gradual recovery therefrom. The concept of habituation is closely related to the concept of attentional capture.…”