Auditory distraction does more than disrupt rehearsal processes in children’s serial recall

Abstract

As children mature, their ability to remember information improves. This improvement has been linked to changes in verbal control processes such as rehearsal. Rehearsal processes are thought to undergo a quantitative shift around 7 years of age; however, direct measurement of rehearsal is difficult. We investigated a measure of rehearsal ability in children and compared this measurement to serial recall performance in the presence of auditory distractors. Theories of auditory distraction effects in children rely upon a combination of attentionally based and serial-order-based processes (Elliott et al. in Journal of Memory and Language, 88, 39-50, 2016); the present work contributes to the understanding of auditory distraction effects by measuring both types of processes within one study. Children completed an individually adjusted serial-recall task with auditory distractors. To assess rehearsal, each child's proportionalized articulatory difference (PAD) score was calculated from performance on adaptive digit span tasks performed in quiet and under articulatory suppression (see also Jarrold & Citroën in Developmental Psychology, 49, 837-847, 2013). Attentional processes were measured in two ways: first, by using complex span tasks, and second, by children's vulnerability to disruption in the context of irrelevant sound. The results indicated that the rehearsal measure was significantly related to the auditory distraction effect, but this relation was isolated to the attentional-diversion component of the irrelevant-sound effect. The results provide preliminary evidence that children consume attentional resources during rehearsal. Moreover, irrelevant sound disrupts children's rehearsal not solely through automatic, obligatory conflict. Rather, irrelevant sound diverts children's attention, which prevents attentional resources from supporting rehearsal processes.

Positive and negative mood states do not influence cross-modal auditory distraction in the serial-recall paradigm

“…This is nevertheless an interesting aspect for future research for the following reasons: First, quiet, distraction-free phases often occur in everyday situations in which one cannot necessarily predict whether or when auditory distraction might appear. Second, recent evidence suggests that—contrary to previous assumptions [e.g., 10 , 22 ]—there is noteworthy disruption of serial recall when comparing a steady-state condition (used here as a baseline for determining the auditory-deviant and the changing-state effect) with a quiet condition [ 75 , 76 ].…”

Irrelevant speech impairs serial recall of verbal but not spatial items in children and adults

“…Respective studies with adults found no evidence for an association between short-term memory capacity and the ISE (Ellermeier & Zimmer, 1997;Elliott & Cowan, 2005, Exp,1;Elliott et al, 2020), with the exception of Elliott and Cowan (2005, Exp. 2), who reported a significant correlation. Following these studies, we used serial recall performance in quiet as an estimate of individual short-term memory capacity, and difference scores (performance in quiet -performance with changing-state speech) as a measure of ISE (AuBuchon et al, 2019;Ellermeier & Zimmer, 1997). Both measures were normally distributed in children and adults.…”

“…In a series of studies, Hughes et al (2005Hughes et al ( , 2007Hughes et al ( , 2013 provided evidence for the duplex-mechanism account by confirming the predicted dissociation between the auditory deviation effect and the CSE. In these studies, the CSE is considered instead of the ISE, since the latter may result from the combined action of both mechanisms, i.e., a steady-state effect indexing attention capture (Bell et al, 2019b), and a changing-state effect indexing interference-by-process (AuBuchon et al, 2019). The findings revealed independent, additive effects of changing-state speech and unexpected voice deviants on verbal serial recall performance (Hughes et al, 2007), as well as differential effects of moderating variables: The CSE, but not the deviation effect, was confined to a task requiring serial order retention (Hughes et al, 2007), whereas the deviation effect, but not the CSE, was confined to the encoding phase of the task and was moderated by manipulations of the participants' attention control, i.e., by providing warnings on the upcoming irrelevant sound, by focal task engagement, and by individual working memory capacity (WMC) (Hughes et al, 2013;Sörqvist, 2010).…”

Strategy Use on Clinical Administrations of Short-Term and Working Memory Tasks

“…However, the current dual task manipulations revealed rehearsal-not attentional refreshing-was the dominant strategy used by adults in both forward and backward serial recall. Importantly, rehearsal may require more controlled attentional resources for school-age children than adults (AuBuchon, McGill, & Elliott, 2019). Thus, measures of immediate serial recall performance in early childhood may have a predictive value for long-term outcomes precisely because rehearsal has not become automatic.…”