Influence of Background Speech and Music in Interrupted Reading: An Eye‐Tracking Study

Cauchard, Fabrice; Cane, James E.; Weger, Ulrich

doi:10.1002/acp.1837

Cited by 42 publications

(64 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…An effect in sentence-level measures (and total reading times for target words) was consistent with findings for alphabetic languages showing that meaningful but not meaningless background speech disrupts reading by increasing re-reading (Cauchard et al, 2012;Hyönä & Ekholm, 2016). The present findings therefore provide novel evidence that such effects are observed for a character-based language such as Chinese in which access to meaning may not be strongly mediated by phonological processes.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…We also assessed whether such effects occur independently of the meaningfulness of speech. Finally, as the present experiment was conducted in Chinese, the findings will reveal if an ISE is observed for character-based languages such as Chinese as well as alphabetic languages in previous research (Cauchard et al, 2012;Hyönä & Ekholm, 2016). A crucial aspect of written Chinese is that access to semantics may not be as strongly mediated by the phonological recoding of written input compared to alphabetic languages, even though phonological information is mandatorily activated (e.g., Perfetti & Zhang, 1991;Zhou & Marslen-Wilson, 2000).…”

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confidence: 59%

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Effects of irrelevant background speech on eye movements during reading

Yan

Meng

Liu

et al. 2018

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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The irrelevant speech effect (ISE) refers to the impairment of visual information processing by background speech. Prior research on the ISE has focused on short-term memory for visually presented word lists. The present research extends this work by using measurements of eye movements to examine effects of irrelevant background speech during Chinese reading. This enabled an examination of the ISE for a language in which access to semantic representations is not strongly mediated by phonology. Participants read sentences while exposed to meaningful irrelevant speech, meaningless speech (scrambled meaningful speech) or silence. A target word of high or low lexical frequency was embedded in each sentence. The results show that meaningful, but not meaningless, background speech produced increased re-reading. In addition, the appearance of a normal word frequency effect, characterised by longer fixation times on low-compared to highfrequency words, was delayed when meaningful or meaningless speech was present in the background. These findings show that irrelevant background speech can disrupt normal processes of reading comprehension and, in addition, that background noise can interfere with the early processing of words. The findings add to evidence showing that normal reading processes can be disrupted by environmental noise such as irrelevant background speech.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

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confidence: 59%

Effects of irrelevant background speech on eye movements during reading

Yan

Meng

Liu

et al. 2018

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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“…Causes of task interruptions are, for example, colleagues asking questions, telephone conversations and other unexpected tasks in pressing need of completion. Task interruptions increase feelings of annoyance and anxiety (Bailey & Konstan, ; Bailey, Konstan, & Carlis, ), and they increase task‐completion time (Bailey & Konstan, ; Cauchard, Cane, & Weger, ; Hodgetts, Vachon, & Tremblay, ). Noise is another factor at work causing annoyance (Banbury & Berry, ; Sundstrom, Town, Rice, Osborn, & Brill, ), and it has negative consequences for, for example, motivation (Evans & Johnson, ), concentration, feelings of privacy (Banbury & Berry, ), satisfaction (Sundstrom et al, ) and performance (Loewen & Suedfeld, ; Sundstrom et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Background speech has documented effects on language related tasks like writing (Keus van de Poll, Ljung, Odelius, & Sörqvist, ; Sörqvist, Nöstl, & Halin, ), proofreading (Halin, Marsh, Haga, Holmgren, & Sörqvist, ; Jones, Miles, & Page, ; Venetjoki, Kaarlela‐Tuomaala, Keskinen, & Hongisto, ) and reading comprehension (Banbury & Berry, ; Martin, Wogalter, & Forlano, ). With few exceptions (Cauchard et al, ; Hodgetts et al, ), task interruptions and background speech have been studied in isolation, not in combination; even though they both potentially disrupt performance, lead to annoyance, and are both frequently present in the workplace. The purpose of the experiments reported in the current paper was to investigate the combined effects of background speech and task interruptions on cognitive performance in the context of an applied office‐related task: word processed writing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Task Interruption and Background Speech on Word Processed Writing

Poll

Sörqvist

2016

Applied Cognitive Psychology

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SummaryTask interruptions and background speech, both part of the everyday situation in office environments, impair cognitive performance. The current experiments explored the combined effects of background speech and task interruptions on word processed writing—arguably, a task representative of office work. Participants wrote stories, in silence or in the presence of background speech (monologues, halfalogues and dialogues), and were occasionally interrupted by a secondary task. Writing speed was comparably low during the immediate period after the interruption (Experiments 1 and 2); it took 10–15 s to regain full writing speed. Background speech had only a small effect on performance (Experiment 1), but a dialogue was more disruptive than a halfalogue (Experiment 2). Background speech did not add to the cost caused by task interruptions. However, subjective measures suggested that speech, just as interruptions, contributed to perceived workload. The findings are discussed in view of attentional capture and interference‐by‐process mechanisms.© 2016 The Authors. Applied Cognitive Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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“…Some features of how the eyes move across text are common to most reading contexts. Other features vary according to reader purpose and text characteristics (e.g., Cauchard, Cane, & Weger, 2012;Kaakinen & Hyönä, 2014;Schad, Nuthmann, & Engbert, 2012;Schnitzer & Kowler, 2006). These studies have almost exclusively involved participants reading unfamiliar, researcher-provided texts.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading during the composition of multi-sentence texts: an eye-movement study

Torrance

Johansson

et al. 2015

Psychological Research

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Writers composing multi-sentence texts have immediate access to a visual representation of what they have written. Little is known about the detail of writers' eye movements within this text during production. We describe two experiments in which competent adult writers' eye-movements were tracked while performing short expository writing tasks. These are contrasted with conditions in which participants read and evaluated researcher-provided texts. Writers spent a mean of around 13% of their time looking back into their text. Initiation of these look-back sequences was strongly predicted by linguistically important boundaries in their ongoing production (e.g., writers were much more likely to look back immediately prior to starting a new sentence). 36% of look-back sequences were associated with sustained reading and the remainder with less patterned forward and backward saccades between words ("hopping"). Fixation and gaze durations and the presence of word-length effects suggested lexical processing of fixated words in both reading and hopping sequences. Word frequency effects were not present when writers read their own text. Findings demonstrate the technical possibility and potential value of examining writers' fixations within their just-written text. We suggest that these fixations do not serve solely, or even primarily, in monitoring for error, but play an important role in planning ongoing production. Text production proceeds as a series of bursts of transcription followed by pauses, with pausing more likely to occur at linguistically-significant boundaries -between clauses, sentences or paragraphs -than between or within words (Baaijen, Galbraith, & de Glopper, 2012;Sanders & Schilperoord, 2006;Wengelin, 2006). Mean sentence-initial latencies, for example, are typically in the region of 2s to 3s, but show substantial negative skew, with a non-negligible proportion of sentence-initial pauses being much longer. The cognitive activity that occurs during these pauses is not well understood. It is likely to involve the writer assessing the accuracy and appropriateness of the text-just-written, a function similar to the monitoring that occurs during speech production (Levelt, 1983; Postma, 2000), and planning the content and form of the text that will follow. Both of these functions -monitoring and planning -are potentially supported by the writer looking back at what they have just written. Pauses, at least at sentence boundaries and above, are typically sufficiently long to make it plausible that they are due, at least in part, to writers looking back into their text.Study of readers' eye movements has produced a large body of research on the mechanisms that underlie reading (e.g., Engbert, Longtin, & Kliegl, 2002;Rayner, 1998). Some features of how the eyes move across text are common to most reading contexts. Other features vary according to reader purpose and text characteristics (e.g., Cauchard, Cane, & Weger, 2012;Kaakinen & Hyönä, 2014;Schad, Nuthmann, & Engbert, 2012;Schnitzer & Kowler, 2006). These...

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Influence of Background Speech and Music in Interrupted Reading: An Eye‐Tracking Study

Cited by 42 publications

References 38 publications

Effects of irrelevant background speech on eye movements during reading

Effects of irrelevant background speech on eye movements during reading

Effects of Task Interruption and Background Speech on Word Processed Writing

Reading during the composition of multi-sentence texts: an eye-movement study

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