Effects of speech on proofreading: Can task-engagement manipulations shield against distraction?

Abstract

This article reports 2 experiments that examine techniques to shield against the potentially disruptive effects of task-irrelevant background speech on proofreading. The participants searched for errors in texts that were either normal (i.e., written in Times New Roman font) or altered (i.e., presented either in Haettenschweiler font or in Times New Roman but masked by visual noise) in 2 sound conditions: a silent condition and a condition with background speech. Proofreading for semantic/contextual errors was impaired by speech, but only when the text was normal. This effect of speech was completely abolished when the text was written in an altered font (Experiment 1) or when it was masked by visual noise (Experiment 2). There was no functional difference between the 2 ways to alter the text with regard to the way the manipulations influenced the effects of background speech on proofreading. The results indicate that increased task demands, which lead to greater focal-task engagement, may shield against the distracting effects of background speech on proofreading.

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

“…Furthermore, extending considerably beyond other recent work on auditory distraction (Halin et al, 2014a(Halin et al, , 2014bHughes et al, 2013), we have been able to show that increased task-engagement exerts its impact via a selection process taking place at the point of presentation of distracters rather than later during retrieval processes.…”

“…It is worth noting in closing that the shielding effect of increased task-engagement against distraction may have applied as well as the theoretical implications that we have emphasized here: We have now shown that it extends to a variety of applied tasks (proofreading; Halin et al, 2014a;text memory;Halin et al, 2014b) and to a variety of sound-types including acoustically deviant sounds (Hughes et al, 2013) and meaningful speech (present DYNAMIC COGNITIVE CONTROL OF IRRELEVANT SOUND 31 study; Halin et al, 2014a;2014b). Whilst no doubt counterintuitive, degrading visual stimuli may have value as a practical intervention for individuals with poor attentional control such as those with cognitive deficits characterising schizophrenia (Cellard, Tremblay, Lehoux, & Roy, 2007), normal ageing (e.g., Hasher & Zacks, 1988), dementia of the Azheimer's type (Levinoff, Li, Murtha, & Cherktow, 2004) and attentional deficit hyperactivity disorder (Pelletier, Hodgetts, Lafluer, Vincent, & Tremblay, 2013).…”

“…If task-engagement were not boosted, the level of recall performance would be expected to be reduced directly by increased task-difficulty (see, e.g., Eggemeier & O'Donnell, 1983). Increased task-engagement, in turn, may result in the suppression of activity in the cortical (and subcortical) areas responsible for sound/speech processing DYNAMIC COGNITIVE CONTROL OF IRRELEVANT SOUND 13 (Regenbogen et al, 2012;Sörqvist et al, 2012; see also Halin et al, 2014aHalin et al, , 2014bHughes et al, 2013).…”

“…We reasoned that the greater task-difficulty in the degraded condition would promote active focal task-engagement as a means of compensating for that increase in difficulty. We predicted that such increased engagement will, in turn, attenuate the B-SSSE on veridical and erroneous recall, just as the same increase in task-difficulty shields serial recall performance from attentional capture by an irrelevant auditory deviant (Hughes et al, 2013) and office-related tasks from distraction by irrelevant meaningful speech (compared to quiet; Halin et al, 2014aHalin et al, , 2014b. The backdrop for this expectation is that increased focal-task difficulty has been shown to limit the extent to which background sound is processed, as indexed by eventrelated potentials (Sörqvist et al, 2012) and behavioral auditory attentional capture effects (Hughes et al, 2013).…”

Unmasking the effects of masking on performance: The potential of multiple-voice masking in the office environment

“…For example, background speech tends to impair tasks like proofreading (Halin et al, 2013), reading comprehension (Halin et al, 2014;Perham and Currie, 2014), and writing (Keus van de Poll et al, 2014;S€ orqvist et al, 2012) that are presumably representative of the type of task typically undertaken in office environments. Many companies have introduced masking sound in the working environment to combat the potential negative impact of background speech on such cognitive tasks.…”