Interference by process, not content, determines semantic auditory distraction

Marsh, John Everett ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9494-1287, Hughes, Robert Wyn and Jones, Dylan Marc ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8783-5542 2009. Interference by process, not content, determines semantic auditory distraction. Cognition 110 (1) , pp. 23-38. 10.1016/j.cognition.2008.08.003

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Abstract

Distraction by irrelevant background sound of visually-based cognitive tasks illustrates the vulnerability of attentional selectivity across modalities. Four experiments centred on auditory distraction during tests of memory for visually-presented semantic information. Meaningful irrelevant speech disrupted the free recall of semantic category-exemplars more than meaningless irrelevant sound (Experiment 1). This effect was exacerbated when the irrelevant speech was semantically related to the to-be-remembered material (Experiment 2). Importantly, however, these effects of meaningfulness and semantic relatedness were shown to arise only when instructions emphasized recall by category rather than by serial order (Experiments 3 and 4). The results favor a process-oriented, rather than a structural, approach to the breakdown of attentional selectivity and forgetting: performance is impaired by the similarity of process brought to bear on the relevant and irrelevant material, not the similarity in item content.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Psychology
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Auditory distraction; Semantic interference; Selective attention; Interference-by-process; Semantic-category clustering
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0010-0277
Last Modified:	18 Oct 2022 12:54
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/11572

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