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Listeners with normal audiometric thresholds show substantial variability in their ability to understand speech in noise (SiN). These individual differences have been reported to be associated with a range of auditory and cognitive abilities. The present study addresses the association between SiN processing and the individual susceptibility of short-term memory to auditory distraction (i.e., the irrelevant sound effect [ISE]). In a sample of 67 young adult participants with normal audiometric thresholds, we measured speech recognition performance in a spatial listening task with two interfering talkers (speech-in-speech identification), audiometric thresholds, binaural sensitivity to the temporal fine structure (interaural phase differences [IPD]), serial memory with and without interfering talkers, and self-reported noise sensitivity. Speech-in-speech processing was not significantly associated with the ISE. The most important predictors of high speech-in-speech recognition performance were a large short-term memory span, low IPD thresholds, bilaterally symmetrical audiometric thresholds, and low individual noise sensitivity. Surprisingly, the susceptibility of short-term memory to irrelevant sound accounted for a substantially smaller amount of variance in speech-in-speech processing than the nondisrupted short-term memory capacity. The data confirm the role of binaural sensitivity to the temporal fine structure, although its association to SiN recognition was weaker than in some previous studies. The inverse association between self-reported noise sensitivity and SiN processing deserves further investigation.

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Irrelevant speech impairs cognitive performance, especially in tasks requiring verbal short-term memory. Working on these tasks during irrelevant speech can also cause a physiological stress reaction. The aim of this study was to examine heart rate variability (HRV) as a non-invasive and easy-to-use stress measure in an irrelevant speech paradigm. Thirty participants performed cognitive tasks (n-back and serial recall) during two sound conditions: irrelevant speech (50 dB) and quiet (33 dB steady-state noise). The influence of conditions as well as presentation orders of conditions were examined on performance, subjective experience, and physiological stress. Working during irrelevant speech compared to working during quiet reduced performance, namely accuracy, in the serial recall task. It was more annoying, heightened the perceived workload, and lowered acoustic satisfaction. It was related to higher physiological stress by causing faster heart rate and changes in HRV frequency-domain analysis (LF, HF and LF/HF). The order of conditions showed some additional effects. When speech was the first condition, 3-back performance was less accurate, and serial recall response times were longer, heart rate was faster, and successive heart beats had less variability (lower RMSSD) during speech than during quiet. When quiet was the first condition, heart rate was faster and reaction times in 3-back were slower during quiet than during speech. The negative effect of irrelevant speech was clear in experience, performance, and physiological stress. The study shows that HRV can be used as a physiological stress measure in irrelevant speech studies.

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Previous studies suggest that task-irrelevant changing-state sound interferes specifically with the processing of serial order information in the focal task (e.g., serial recall from short-term memory), whereas a deviant sound in the auditory background is supposed to divert central attention, thus producing distraction in various types of cognitive tasks. Much of the evidence for this distinction rests on the observed dissociations in auditory distraction between serial and non-serial short-term memory tasks. In this study, both the changing-state effect and the deviation effect were contrasted between serial digit recall and mental arithmetic tasks. In three experiments (two conducted online), changing-state sound was found to disrupt serial recall, but it did not lead to a general decrement in performance in different mental arithmetic tasks. In contrast, a deviant voice in the stream of irrelevant speech sounds did not cause reliable distraction in serial recall and simple addition/subtraction tasks, but it did disrupt a more demanding mental arithmetic task. Specifically, the evaluation of math equations (multiplication and addition/subtraction), which was combined with a pair-associate memory task to increase the task demand, was found to be susceptible to auditory distraction in participants who did not serially rehearse the pair-associates. Together, the results support the assumption that the interference produced by changing-state sound is highly specific to tasks that require serial-order processing, whereas auditory deviants may cause attentional capture primarily in highly demanding cognitive tasks (e.g., mental arithmetic) that cannot be solved through serial rehearsal.

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Immediate serial recall of visually presented items is reliably impaired by task-irrelevant speech that the participants are instructed to ignore ("irrelevant speech effect," ISE). The ISE is stronger with changing speech tokens (words or syllables) when compared to repetitions of single tokens ("changing-state effect," CSE). These phenomena have been attributed to sound-induced diversions of attention away from the focal task (attention capture account), or to specific interference of obligatory, involuntary sound processing with either the integrity of phonological traces in a phonological short-term store (phonological loop account), or the efficiency of a domain-general rehearsal process employed for serial order retention (changing-state account). Aiming to further explore the role of attention, phonological coding, and serial order retention in the ISE, we analyzed the effects of steady-state and changing-state speech on serial order reconstruction of visually presented verbal and spatial items in children (n = 81) and adults (n = 80). In the verbal task, both age groups performed worse with changing-state speech (sequences of different syllables) when compared with steady-state speech (one syllable repeated) and silence. Children were more impaired than adults by both speech sounds. In the spatial task, no disruptive effect of irrelevant speech was found in either group. These results indicate that irrelevant speech evokes similarity-based interference, and thus pose difficulties for the attention-capture and the changing-state account of the ISE.

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Most studies investigating the effects of environmental noise on children's cognitive performance examine the impact of monaural noise (i.e., same signal to both ears), oversimplifying multiple aspects of binaural hearing (i.e., adequately reproducing interaural differences and spatial information). In the current study, the effects of a realistic classroom-noise scenario presented either monaurally or binaurally on tasks requiring processing of auditory and visually presented information were analyzed in children and adults. In Experiment 1, across age groups, word identification was more impaired by monaural than by binaural classroom noise, whereas listening comprehension (acting out oral instructions) was equally impaired in both noise conditions. In both tasks, children were more affected than adults. Disturbance ratings were unrelated to the actual performance decrements. Experiment 2 revealed detrimental effects of classroom noise on short-term memory (serial recall of words presented pictorially), which did not differ with age or presentation mode (monaural vs. binaural). The present results add to the evidence for detrimental effects of noise on speech perception and cognitive performance, and their interactions with age, using a realistic classroom-noise scenario. Binaural simulations of real-world auditory environments can improve the external validity of studies on the impact of noise on children's and adults' learning.

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Working memory performance is markedly disrupted when task-irrelevant sound is played during item presentation or retention. In a preregistered replication study, we systematically examined the role of intensity in two types of auditory distraction. The first type of distraction is the changing-state effect (i.e., increased disruption by changing-state relative to steady-state sequences). The second type is the auditory deviant effect (i.e., increased disruption by auditory deviant relative to steady-state sequences). In previous experiments, the changing-state effect was independent of intensity. Whether a deviation in intensity leads to an increase in disruption has not yet been examined. We replicated the classic finding that the increased disruption by changing-state relative to steady-state sequences is independent of intensity. Contrary to previous studies, we found an unexpected main effect of intensity. Steady-state and changing-state sequences presented at 75 dB(A) were more disruptive than presented at 45 dB(A), suggesting that intensity plays a more important role than previously assumed in the disruption of working memory performance. Furthermore, we tested the prediction of the violation of expectancy account, according to which deviant distractors at a lower and higher intensity than the rest of the sequence should be equally disruptive. Our results were consistent with this prediction.

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The duplex-mechanism account of auditory distraction has been extended to predict that people should have metacognitive awareness of the disruptive effect of auditory deviants on cognitive performance but little to no such awareness of the disruptive effect of changing-state relative to steady-state auditory distractors. To test this prediction, we assessed different types of metacognitive judgments about the disruptive effects of auditory-deviant, changing-state, and steady-state distractor sequences on serial recall. In a questionnaire, participants read about an irrelevant-speech experiment and were asked to provide metacognitive beliefs about how serial-recall performance would be affected by the different types of distractors. Another sample of participants heard the auditory distractors before predicting how their own serial-recall performance would suffer or benefit from the distractors. After participants had experienced the disruptive effects of the distractor sequences first hand, they were asked to make episodic retrospective judgments about how they thought the distractor sequences had affected their performance. The results consistently show that people are, on average, well aware of the greater disruptive effect of deviant and changing-state relative to steady-state distractors. Irrespective of condition, prospective and retrospective judgments of distraction were poor predictors of the individual susceptibility to distraction. These findings suggest that phenomena of auditory distraction cannot be categorized in two separate classes based on metacognitive awareness.

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The irrelevant sound effect (ISE) describes the disruption of processes involved in maintaining information in working memory (WM) when irrelevant noise is present in the environment. While some posit that the ISE arises due to split obligation of attention to the irrelevant sound and the to-be-remembered information, others have argued that background noise corrupts the order of information within WM. Support for the latter position comes from research showing that the ISE appears to be most robust in tasks that emphasize ordered maintenance by a serial rehearsal strategy, and diminished when rehearsal is discouraged or precluded by task characteristics. This prior work confounds the demand for seriation with rehearsal. Thus, the present study aims to disentangle ordered maintenance from a rehearsal strategy by using a running memory span task that requires ordered output but obviates the utility of rehearsal. Across four experiments, we find a significant ISE that persists under conditions that should discourage the use of rehearsal and among individuals who self-report use of alternative strategies. These findings indicate that rehearsal is not necessary to produce an ISE in a serial recall task and thus fail to corroborate accounts of the ISE that emphasize the involvement of rehearsal.

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Irrelevant background speech causes dissatisfaction and impairs cognitive performance in open-plan offices. The model of Hongisto (2005, Indoor Air, 15, 458-468) predicts the relation between cognitive performance and the intelligibility of speech described with an objectively measured quantity, the Speech Transmission Index (STI). The model has impacted research in psychology and room acoustics as well as the acoustic design guidelines of offices. However, the model was based on scarce empirical data. The aim of this study was to revise the model based on a systematic literature review, focusing on laboratory experiments manipulating the STI of speech by wide-band steady-state noise. Fourteen studies reporting altogether 34 tests of the STI-performance relation were included. According to Model 1 that includes all tests, performance begins to decrease approximately above STI = 0.21 while the maximum decrease is reached at STI = 0.44. Verbal short-term memory tasks were most strongly and very consistently affected by the STI of speech. The model for these tasks showed a deterioration in performance between STI 0.12 and 0.51. Some evidence of an STI-performance relation was found in verbal working memory tasks and limited evidence in complex verbal tasks. Further research is warranted, particularly concerning task-specific effects.

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On tests of verbal short-term memory, performance declines as a function of auditory distraction. The negative impact of to-be-ignored sound on serial recall is known as the irrelevant sound effect. It can occur with speech, sine tones, and music. Moreover, sound that changes acoustically from one token to the next (i.e., changing-state sound) is more disruptive to serial recall than repetitive, steady-state sound. We tested manipulations that resulted in changes in (higher levels of) perceptual organization for more complex tonal stimuli. Within a trial, the first two bars of a well-known melody were repeated (a) in the exact same manner, (b) with variations only in tempo, (c) with variations only in mode (e.g., Dorian or Phrygian), or (d) with variations in both tempo and mode. Participants serially recalled digits in each of the irrelevant sound conditions as well as in a silent control condition. In Experiment 1a, we tested non-music students and, to investigate whether musical expertise affected the findings, additionally tested students majoring in music in Experiment 1b. Across both samples, recall in the irrelevant sound conditions was significantly poorer than in the silent control condition, but only the tempo variation caused an additional harmful effect. The mode variation did not affect recall performance, in either music or non-music students. These findings indicate that, at least with music, changes are a matter of degree and not every additional variation impairs recall performance.

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According to the interference-by-process mechanism of auditory distraction, irrelevant changing sounds interfere with subvocal articulatory-motor sequencing during rehearsal. However, previous attempts to limit rehearsal with concurrent articulation and examine the residual irrelevant sound effect have limited both cumulative rehearsal as well as the initial assembly of articulatory-phonological labels. The current research decomposed rehearsal into these two levels of articulatory-phonological sequencing: silent concurrent articulation limits the availability of both serial repetition and articulatory-phonological recoding; rapid serial visual presentation allows for articulatory-phonological recoding but presents items too quickly for cumulative serial repetition. As predicted by the interference-by-process account, concurrent articulation -- but not rapid serial visual presentation -- reduced the irrelevant sound effect. Not only did the irrelevant sound effect persist in the face of rapid serial visual presentation, a steady-state effect also emerged. These findings indicate that irrelevant sounds interfere with both serial processing at the level of articulatory-motor planning at the word level as well as in the formation of item-to-item associations created via serial repetition of complete items. Moreover, these findings highlight the benefits of articulatory-phonological recoding - independent of pure rehearsal -- within serial recall.

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The current research employed a classic irrelevant sound effect paradigm and investigated the talker-specific content of the irrelevant speech. Specifically, we aimed to determine if the participants' familiarity with the irrelevant speech's talker affected the magnitude of the irrelevant sound effect. Experiment 1 was an exploration of talker familiarity established in a natural listening environment (i.e., a university classroom) in which we manipulated the participants' relationships with the talker. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the participants' familiarity with the talker via 4 days of controlled exposure to the target talker's audio recordings. For both Experiments 1 and 2, a robust effect of irrelevant speech was found; however, regardless of the talker manipulation, talker familiarity did not influence the size of the effect. We interpreted the results within the processing view of the auditory distraction effect and highlighted the notion that talker familiarity may be more vulnerable than once thought.

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Four experiments tested conflicting predictions about which components of the serial-recall task are most sensitive to auditory distraction. Changing-state (Experiments 1a and 1b) and deviant distractor sounds (Experiments 2a and 2b) were presented in one of four different intervals of the serial-recall task: (1) during the first half of encoding, (2) during the second half of encoding, (3) during the first half of retention, or (4) during the second half of retention. According to the embedded-processes model, both types of distractors should interfere with the encoding and rehearsal of targets in the focus of attention. According to the duplex-mechanism account, changing-state distractors should interfere only with rehearsal, whereas deviant distractors should interfere only with encoding. Inconsistent with the latter view, changing-state and deviant distractor sounds interfered with both the encoding and the retention of the targets. Both types of auditory distraction were most pronounced during the second half of encoding when the increasing rehearsal demands had to be coordinated with the continuous updating of the rehearsal set. These findings suggest that the two types of distraction disrupt similar working memory mechanisms.

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The Irrelevant Sound Effect (ISE) is the finding that background sound impairs accuracy for visually presented serial recall tasks. Among various auditory backgrounds, speech typically acts as the strongest distractor. Based on the changing-state hypothesis, speech is a disruptive background because it is more complex than other nonspeech backgrounds. In the current study, we evaluate an alternative explanation by examining whether the speech-likeness of the background (speech fidelity) contributes, beyond signal complexity, to the ISE. We did this by using noise-vocoded speech as a background. In Experiment 1, we varied the complexity of the background by manipulating the number of vocoding channels. Results indicate that the ISE increases with the number of channels, suggesting that more complex signals produce greater ISEs. In Experiment 2, we varied complexity and speech fidelity independently. At each channel level, we selectively reversed a subset of channels to design a low-fidelity signal that was equated in overall complexity. Experiment 2 results indicated that speech-like noise-vocoded speech produces a larger ISE than selectively reversed noise-vocoded speech. Finally, in Experiment 3, we evaluated the locus of the speech-fidelity effect by assessing the distraction produced by these stimuli in a missing-item task. In this task, even though noise-vocoded speech disrupted task performance relative to silence, neither its complexity nor speech fidelity contributed to this effect. Together, these findings indicate a clear role for speech fidelity of the background beyond its changing-state quality and its attention capture potential.

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Although articulatory suppression abolishes the effect of irrelevant sound (ISE) on serial recall when sequences are presented visually, the effect persists with auditory presentation of list items. Two experiments were designed to test the claim that, when articulation is suppressed, the effect of irrelevant sound on the retention of auditory lists resembles a suffix effect. A suffix is a spoken word that immediately follows the final item in a list. Even though participants are told to ignore it, the suffix impairs serial recall of auditory lists. In Experiment 1, the irrelevant sound consisted of instrumental music. The music generated a significant ISE that was abolished by articulatory suppression. It therefore appears that, when articulation is suppressed, irrelevant sound must contain speech for it to have any effect on recall. This is consistent with what is known about the suffix effect. In Experiment 2, the effect of irrelevant sound under articulatory suppression was greater when the irrelevant sound was spoken by the same voice that presented the list items. This outcome is again consistent with the known characteristics of the suffix effect. It therefore appears that, when rehearsal is suppressed, irrelevant sound disrupts the acoustic-perceptual encoding of auditorily presented list items. There is no evidence that the persistence of the ISE under suppression is a result of interference to the representation of list items in a postcategorical phonological store.

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There is an ongoing debate about whether children have more problems ignoring auditory distractors than adults. This is an important empirical question with direct implications for theories making predictions about the development of selective attention. In two experiments, the disruptive effect of to-be-ignored speech on short-term memory performance of third graders, fourth graders, fifth graders, younger adults, and older adults was examined. Three auditory conditions were compared: (a) steady state sequences in which the same distractor was repeated, (b) changing state sequences in which different distractors were presented, and (c) auditory deviant sequences in which a deviant distractor was presented in a sequence of repeated distractors. According to the attentional resource view, children should exhibit larger disruption by changing and deviant sounds due to their poorer attentional control abilities compared with adults. The duplex-mechanism account proposes that the auditory deviant effect is under attentional control, whereas the changing state effect is not, and thus predicts that children should be more susceptible to auditory deviants than adults but equally disrupted by changing state sequences. According to the renewed view of age-related distraction, there should be no age differences in cross-modal auditory distraction because some of the irrelevant auditory information can be filtered out early in the processing stream. Children and adults were equally disrupted by changing and deviant speech sounds regardless of whether task difficulty was equated between age groups or not. These results are consistent with the renewed view of age-related distraction.

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OBJECTIVE: An ecologically valid adaptation of the irrelevant sound effect paradigm was employed to examine the relative roles of short-term memory, selective attention, and sustained attention in ADHD. METHOD: In all, 32 adults with ADHD and 32 control participants completed a serial recall task in silence or while ignoring irrelevant background sound. RESULTS: Serial recall performance in adults with ADHD was reduced relative to controls in both conditions. The degree of interference due to irrelevant sound was greater for adults with ADHD. Furthermore, a positive correlation was observed between task performance under conditions of irrelevant sound and the extent of attentional problems reported by patients on a clinical symptom scale. CONCLUSION: The results demonstrate that adults with ADHD exhibit impaired short-term memory and a low resistance to distraction; however, their capacity for sustained attention is preserved as the impact of irrelevant sound diminished over the course of the task.

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Phonological working memory is known be (a) inversely related to the duration of the items to be learned (word-length effect), and (b) impaired by the presence of irrelevant speech-like sounds (irrelevant-speech effect). As it is discussed controversially whether these memory disruptions are subject to attentional control, both effects were studied in sighted participants and in a sample of early blind individuals who are expected to be superior in selectively attending to auditory stimuli. Results show that, while performance depended on word length in both groups, irrelevant speech interfered with recall only in the sighted group, but not in blind participants. This suggests that blind listeners may be able to effectively prevent irrelevant sound from being encoded in the phonological store, presumably due to superior auditory processing. The occurrence of a word-length effect, however, implies that blind and sighted listeners are utilizing the same phonological rehearsal mechanism in order to maintain information in the phonological store.

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Two experiments examined the role of predictability within the elements of a task-irrelevant auditory sequence on the disruption produced to visual-verbal serial recall. Experiment 1 showed that participants did not benefit from having a long-term representation of the irrelevant sequence: A highly predictable, canonical sequence ("1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9") produced as much disruption as a repeated random sequence (which was the same on each trial) and an unpredictable, random sequence (which differed on each trial), as compared with quiet. In line with this finding, there was also no difference between a predictable canonical and an unpredictable random sequence in Experiment 2. However, a deviant within the predictable, canonical sequence ("1 2 3 4 5 5 7 8 9") produced greater disruption than a deviant within an unpredictable, random sequence ("4 8 2 9 5 5 7 3 1"). This effect was confined to early trials within the block. The results showed that long-term knowledge about the order of the individual elements in the sequence did not help attenuate the effect of auditory distraction on serial recall. Nevertheless, attentional capture was amplified when a deviant violated a well-known, canonical sequence, providing evidence that the neural model represents postcategorical sequential information.