Self-relevance increases the irrelevant sound effect: Attentional disruption by one's own name

Distraction in verbal short-term memory: Insights from developmental differences

“…The role of the latter manifests in those with low attentional control due to their stage of cognitive development in the context of any sort of sound but, as shown in other recent studies, those with relatively good attentional control (adults) are more likely to only exhibit such diversion in the presence of unexpected deviants (Hughes et al, 2013), particularly salient stimuli (Röer et al, 2013), or when there is semantic overlap between irrelevant and relevant events (e.g., Beaman, 2004;Marsh, Sörqvist, Hodgetts, & Beaman, 2015). While serial rehearsal per se plays a role in both children and adults' disruptibility when a task involves serial rehearsal (cf.…”

“…While an unexpected deviation in the sound (e.g., Hughes et al, 2007) or a particularly meaningful sound (e.g., one's own name; Röer et al, 2013) is typically necessary to divert most adults' attention from a focal task, if general attentional control ability is very low (such as in children of the age studied here), then such 'extreme' events are unnecessary for attentionaldiversion: Such individuals appear to be prone to having their attention drawn from a focal task even by a repetitive sound. This means that it may sometimes be difficult to identify the manner-interference-by-process or attentional diversion-in which a given changing-state sound-sequence disrupts performance.…”

“…The duplex-mechanism account (e.g., Hughes, Hurlstone, Marsh, Vachon, & Jones, 2013;Hughes, Vachon, & Jones, 2005, 2007 posits that the cognitive system is susceptible to two distinct mechanisms of auditory distraction: interference with the particular process (e.g., rehearsal) deployed to perform the focal task (interference-by-process) and the diversion of attention away from a focal task such as typically found with an unexpected deviant sound (e.g., Näätänen, 1990) or meaningfully salient sound (e.g., one's own name; Moray, 1959;Röer, Bell, & Buchner, 2013). For example, one line of evidence that dissociates these two forms of distraction and which is particularly germane in the present context is that adults with low working memory capacity-as measured by complex working memory tasks such as operation span (OSPAN; Turner & Engle, 1989)-show a greater vulnerability to distraction via attentional diversion (e.g., by a deviant sound) but not to one of the key signatures of interference-by-process, namely, distraction by changingcompared to steady-state sound (Hughes et al, 2013;Sörqvist, 2010;Sörqvist, Marsh, & Nöstl, 2013).…”

Attentional control and the self: The Self-Attention Network (SAN)

“…hearing your own name in an irrelevant list can reduce working memory capacity (Röer, Bell & Buchner, 2013). Shapiro, Cadlwell and Sorensen (1997) reported that there was a reduced 'attentional blink' on own name stimuli 1 , consistent with own name stimuli being better able to survive when attention is limited.…”

Dynamic cognitive control of irrelevant sound: Increased task engagement attenuates semantic auditory distraction.

“…Previous research has demonstrated that salient semantic information can indeed capture attention. For example, in a shadowing task in which participants continuously repeat aloud a message presented to one ear while ignoring another message presented to the other ear, about a third of participants hear their own name when it is spoken in the to-be-ignored channel (Conway et al, 2001;Moray, 1959;Wood & Cowan, 1995; see also Röer, Bell, & Buchner, 2013).…”