Boundaries of semantic distraction: Dominance and lexicality act at retrieval

Abstract

Three experiments investigated memory for semantic information with the goal of determining boundary conditions for the manifestation of semantic auditory distraction.Irrelevant speech disrupted the free recall of semantic category-exemplars to an equal degree regardless of whether the speech coincided with presentation or test phases of the task (Experiment 1) and occurred regardless of whether it comprised random words or coherent sentences (Experiment 2). The effects of background speech were greater when the irrelevant speech was semantically related to the to-be-remembered material, but only when the irrelevant words were high in output dominance (Experiment 3). The implications of these findings in relation to the processing of task material and the processing of background speech is discussed.Keywords: Semantic Auditory Distraction, Selective Attention, Interference-by-process, Semantic-Category Clustering RUNNING HEAD: BOUNDARIES OF SEMANTIC DISTRACTION 3There is something special about to-be-ignored background speech. For instance, natural speech is more detrimental to reading comprehension than reversed speech (Oswald, Tremblay, & Jones, 2000) and natural speech is more detrimental to memory of prose than aircraft noise (Sörqvist, 2010). Moreover, background conversation is often a source of complaint, annoyance and self-reported distraction (Evans & Johnson, 2000;Sundstrom, Town, Rice, Osborn, & Brill, 1994;Witterseh, Wyon, & Clausen, 2004).With the exception of its effect on serial short-term memory (Buchner, Irmen, & Erdfelder, 1996;Jones & Macken, 1993;Jones, Madden, & Miles, 1992;Jones, Miles, & Page, 1990;Marsh, Hughes, & Jones, 2008, 2009, speech is invariably the most distracting type of background sound (Marsh & Jones, 2010;Sörqvist, 2010), especially when the task entails processing of meaning (Beaman, 2004;Bell, Buchner, & Mund, 2008;Jones et al., 1990;Marsh, Hughes, & Jones, 2008, 2009Marsh, Beaman, Hughes, & Jones, 2012;Martin et al., 1988;Neely & LeCompte, 1999;Oswald, Tremblay, & Jones, 2000;Sörqvist, Marsh, & Jahncke, 2010;Sörqvist, Nöstl, & Halin, 2012). For instance, recall of a visually-presented list of items taken from the same semantic category (e.g., Fruit) is more impaired when categorically related items (e.g., other Fruit) are spoken in the background in comparison with categorically unrelated items (e.g., Tools). This between-sequence semantic similarity effect is easily replicable (e.g., Sörqvist et al., 2010). However, it appears to necessitate a task instruction that permits and emphasises processing of meaning. The effect is readily observed when the requirement is to free recall to-be-remembered items but fails to materialise when the task instruction emphasises recall in serial order whereby, in contrast to free recall, the processing of meaning plays a much more RUNNING HEAD: BOUNDARIES OF SEMANTIC DISTRACTION 4 subservient role see also Marsh, Vachon, & Jones, 2008). Although effects of the semantic similarity between the to-be-ignored background speech and t...

Trouble articulating the right words: Evidence for a response‐exclusion account of distraction during semantic fluency

“…Within the context of the semantic verbal fluency used in the present study, this implies that the individual words within the to-be-ignored sequence of speech activate individual lexical entries that impede the production of to-be-generated items by occupying an output buffer (Miozzo & Caramazza, 2003). This is broadly consistent with recent findings that demonstrate that neither the continuity of speech (i.e., the presence of co-articulatory cues) nor its inter-word semantic properties (i.e., semantic transitional probabilities) govern the disruption that it produces to semantically-based focal tasks (in such settings, to-be-ignored speech produces disruption due to its lexical-not supra-lexical level properties, see Marsh, Perham, S€ orqvist & Jones, 2014).…”

“…By extension, the greater demand that the task places on the speech‐production system the more likely it is that distractor‐variables – such as distractor‐frequency – that impair speech‐production will assume their disruptive potency. A recent finding that is broadly consistent with this view is that low output‐dominant distractors (output‐dominance being highly correlated with word frequency; Mervis, Catlin & Rosch, ) led to greater impairment in the context of a semantic category‐clustering task than high dominant distractors when they are drawn from a category semantically unrelated to target categories (Marsh et al ., ).…”

See no evil: Cognitive challenges of security surveillance and monitoring.

“…Although operators will attempt to block out background sound, the meaning of speech may still be registered relatively automatically and this can conflict with semantic properties of information that he/she is making a conscious effort to retain. This could particularly be the case if the background sound contains information that is similar (but irrelevant to) the operator's current task (Marsh, Hughes, & Jones, 2009;Marsh, Perham, Sörqvist, & Jones, 2014). For example, even if not attending to a colleague's conversation, semantic information regarding an individual's appearance may nevertheless be processed and Challenges of security surveillance 17 then inadvertently conflict with information held in working memory regarding the operator's current search task, potentially increasing false alarms and suspect identification errors.…”

Dynamic cognitive control of irrelevant sound: Increased task engagement attenuates semantic auditory distraction.

“…Although the incidence of erroneous recalls fits this patternintrusion of distracters decreases as a function of the temporal proximity to the targets-the disruption that B-SSS produces to veridical recall does not. Disruption of veridical recall is of the same magnitude regardless of whether the distracters are presented during encoding, retention, or retrieval phases of the task Marsh, Perham, Sörqvist, & Jones, 2014). Therefore, the attentional slippage account is at best an incomplete account of the B-SSSE on veridical and erroneous recall.…”