Specific foreknowledge reduces auditory distraction by irrelevant speech.

Abstract

In a series of experiments, it was tested whether distraction by changing-state irrelevant speech is inevitable or can be modulated by foreknowledge of an imminent to-be-ignored distractor sequence. Participants were required to remember visually presented digits while ignoring background speech. In the foreknowledge condition of Experiment 1, the upcoming to-be-ignored sentence was presented auditorily and visually before each trial. With specific foreknowledge, the changing-state irrelevant sound effect (here, increased disruption by sentences compared with repeated words) was significantly attenuated relative to a condition without foreknowledge. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, in which the information about the upcoming auditory distractor speech was presented only in the visual modality. Experiment 3 showed that only specific foreknowledge of the auditory distractor material has beneficial effects on the ability to ignore distraction. The mere notification that an unspecified distractor sentence would be presented next had no effect on distraction. In Experiment 4, there was only a small and not statistically significant reduction of the irrelevant speech effect when lists of randomly selected words were used as distractor material, suggesting that foreknowledge effects are more pronounced for highly variable, meaningful distractor material. We conclude that the disruption of short-term memory by irrelevant speech is not purely a stimulus-driven process that is immune to top-down control. A significant proportion of the effect can be modulated by specific knowledge about an imminent distractor sequence.

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

“…The present results-particularly those from Experiment 2-also provide a further novel line of evidence for the key claim of the duplex-mechanism account (e.g., Hughes et al, 2007Hughes et al, , 2013) that the changing-state effect in serial short-term memory tasks is not due to attentional diversion, contrary to several unitary accounts of auditory distraction (Cowan, 1995;Chein & Fiez, 2010;Bell, Dentale, Buchner, & Mayr, 2010;Röer, Bell, & Buchner, 2015;Röer, Bell, Dentale, & Buchner, 2011). The unitary view supposes that rather than interfering specifically with serial rehearsal, changing-state stimuli disrupt performance because each change causes an involuntary orienting response (cf.…”

When is forewarned forearmed? Predicting auditory distraction in short-term memory.

“…However, the deviant in Bell et al's study only produced a very small performance decrement (around 2-3%) whereas the decrement in the relevant experiment of Hughes et al (2013, Experiment 2) was around 10%. As the authors themselves have pointed out (Bell et al, 2017;Röer et al, 2015), it would be difficult to observe a benefit of foreknowledge on distraction if the amount of distraction is very small in the first place. This discrepancy in the size of the deviation effect may be due to the use of a (probably more salient) deviation in voice in Hughes et al (2013) as opposed to a word-deviation (e.g., "fall, fall, fall, dog...") in Bell et al (2017).…”

“…We have argued that such stimulus-aspecific attentional diversion occurs to the extent that a sound is perceived as not belonging to an already established stream; that is, it diverts attention because it violates the current preattentively-generated model of the auditory scene (e.g., Hughes, 2014;Hughes & Jones, 2003;Hughes et al, 2005;Vachon, Hughes, & Jones, 2012; see also Sussman, Horváth, Winkler, & Orr, 2007;Winkler & Schröger, 2015). This conceptualization of aspecific attentional diversion differs in two important ways from that in the attentional diversion account of the changing-state effect (Bell et al, 2017;Röer et al, 2015): First, as noted, we argue that the process of integrating sounds into a stream-which forms the context against which a sound can divert attention-is preattentive; it does not, therefore, consume attentional resources away from focal task processing. Second, stimulus-aspecific attentional diversion occurs when a sound is perceived that cannot be integrated into an already established stream whereas the changing-state effect arises due to the perception of changes within an already established stream.…”

The effect of distraction on change detection in crowded acoustic scenes

“…Arnal et al., 2015, Max et al., 2015) and context (Li et al., 2013, Horváth et al., 2011, Parmentier et al., 2011, Röer et al., 2014a). Understanding the various feature dimensions that contribute to a sound's perceptual prominence is imperative for designing alarms, human computer interfaces and for controlling distractibility in the increasingly sound polluted environments in which we routinely operate (Mentis et al., 2016; Stothart et al., 2015, Röer et al., 2014b). …”