Distraction by steady-state sounds: Evidence for a graded attentional model of auditory distraction

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance
Raoul BellAxel Buchner

Abstract

Sound disrupts short-term retention in working memory even when the sound is completely irrelevant and has to be ignored. The dominant view in the literature is that this type of disruption is essentially limited to so-called changing-state distractor sequences with acoustic changes between successive distractor objects (e.g., "ABABABAB") and does not occur with so-called steady-state distractor sequences that are composed of a single repeated distractor object (e.g., "AAAAAAAA"). Here we show that this view can no longer be maintained. What is more, disruption by steady-state distractors is significantly reduced after preexposure to the distractor item, directly confirming a central assumption of attentional explanations of auditory distraction and parallel to what has been shown earlier for changing-state sounds. Taken together, the findings reported here are compatible with a graded attentional account of auditory disruption, and they are incompatible with the duplex-mechanism account. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Citations

Jul 17, 2019·Scientific Reports·Raoul BellAxel Buchner
Jul 11, 2019·Attention, Perception & Psychophysics·John E MarshRobert W Hughes
Jan 19, 2021·Auditory Perception & Cognition·Angela M AuBuchonEmily M Elliott
Dec 17, 2021·Experimental Psychology·Jamielyn R SamperJason Chein

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