The influence of top-down cognitive control on 2 putatively distinct forms of distraction was investigated. Attentional capture by a task-irrelevant auditory deviation (e.g., a female-spoken token following a sequence of male-spoken tokens)-as indexed by its disruption of a visually presented recall task-was abolished when focal-task engagement was promoted either by increasing the difficulty of encoding the visual to-be-remembered stimuli (by reducing their perceptual discriminability; Experiments 1 and 2) or by providing foreknowledge of an imminent deviation (Experiment 2). In contrast, distraction from continuously changing auditory stimuli ("changing-state effect") was not modulated by task-difficulty or foreknowledge (Experiment 3). We also confirmed that individual differences in working memory capacity--typically associated with maintaining task-engagement in the face of distraction--predict the magnitude of the deviation effect, but not the changing-state effect. This convergence of experimental and psychometric data strongly supports a duplex-mechanism account of auditory distraction: Auditory attentional capture (deviation effect) is open to top-down cognitive control, whereas auditory distraction caused by direct conflict between the sound and focal-task processing (changing-state effect) is relatively immune to such control.

The disruption of short-term memory by to-be-ignored auditory sequences (the changing-state effect) has often been characterized as attentional capture by deviant events (deviation effect). However, the present study demonstrates that changing-state and deviation effects are functionally distinct forms of auditory distraction: The disruption of visual-verbal serial recall by changing-state speech was independent of the effect of a single deviant voice embedded within the speech (Experiment 1); a voice-deviation effect, but not a changing-state effect, was found on a missing-item task (Experiment 2); and a deviant voice repetition within the context of an alternating-voice irrelevant speech sequence disrupted serial recall (Experiment 3). The authors conclude that the changing-state effect is the result of a conflict between 2 seriation processes being applied concurrently to relevant and irrelevant material, whereas the deviation effect reflects a more general attention-capture process.

A novel attentional capture effect is reported in which visual-verbal serial recall was disrupted if a single deviation in the interstimulus interval occurred within otherwise regularly presented task-irrelevant spoken items. The degree of disruption was the same whether the temporal deviant was embedded in a sequence made up of a repeating item or a sequence of changing items. Moreover, the effect was evident during the presentation of the to-be-remembered sequence but not during rehearsal just prior to recall, suggesting that the encoding of sequences is particularly susceptible. The results suggest that attentional capture is due to a violation of an algorithm rather than an aggregate-based neural model and further undermine an attentional capture-based account of the classical changing-state irrelevant sound effect.

The role of memory in behavioral distraction by auditory attentional capture was investigated: We examined whether capture is a product of the novelty of the capturing event (i.e., the absence of a recent memory for the event) or its violation of learned expectancies on the basis of a memory for an event structure. Attentional capture-indicated by disruption of a focal visually presented serial recall task-was found when the voice conveying a concurrent irrelevant auditory sequence changed every 5 recall trials (from male to female or vice versa). There was no evidence of attentional capture when the irrelevant sequence was first encountered and hence novel; capture occurred only when an expectation for a particular voice had been learned and then violated. Furthermore, with the increasing predictability of (and hence expectancy for) the voice changes across the experimental session, the capture response diminished only to be reinstated when that session-wide expectation was itself violated by a break in the change-every-5-trials pattern. The results highlight the critical role of learned expectations, as opposed to novelty detection, in behavioral auditory attentional capture.

Objective: The aim of this study was to test whether inattentional deafness to critical alarms would be observed in a simulated cockpit. Background: The inability of pilots to detect unexpected changes in their auditory environment (e.g., alarms) is a major safety problem in aeronautics. In aviation, the lack of response to alarms is usually not attributed to attentional limitations, but rather to pilots choosing to ignore such warnings due to decision biases, hearing issues, or conscious risk taking. Method: Twenty-eight general aviation pilots performed two landings in a flight simulator. In one scenario an auditory alert was triggered alone, whereas in the other the auditory alert occurred while the pilots dealt with a critical windshear. Results: In the windshear scenario, 11 pilots (39.3%) did not report or react appropriately to the alarm whereas all the pilots perceived the auditory warning in the no-windshear scenario. Also, of those pilots who were first exposed to the no-windshear scenario and detected the alarm, only three suffered from inattentional deafness in the subsequent windshear scenario. Conclusion: These findings establish inattentional deafness as a cognitive phenomenon that is critical for air safety. Pre-exposure to a critical event triggering an auditory alarm can enhance alarm detection when a similar event is encountered subsequently. Application: Case-based learning is a solution to mitigate auditory alarm misperception.