Metacognition in Auditory Distraction: How Expectations about Distractibility Influence the Irrelevant Sound Effect

Abstract

Task-irrelevant, to-be-ignored sound disrupts serial short-term memory for visually presented items compared to a quiet control condition. We tested whether disruption by changing state irrelevant sound is modulated by expectations about the degree to which distractors would disrupt serial recall performance. The participants' expectations were manipulated by providing the (bogus) information that the irrelevant sound would be either easy or difficult to ignore. In Experiment 1, piano melodies were used as auditory distractors. Participants who expected the degree of disruption to be low made more errors in serial recall than participants who expected the degree of disruption to be high, independent of whether distractors were present or not. Although expectation had no effect on the magnitude of disruption, participants in the easy-to-ignore group reported after the experiment that they were less disrupted by the irrelevant sound than participants in the difficult-to-ignore group. In Experiment 2, spoken texts were used as auditory distractors. Expectations about the degree of disruption did not affect serial recall performance. Moreover, the subjective and objective distraction by irrelevant speech was similar in the easy-to-ignore group and in the difficult-to-ignore group. Thus, while metacognitive beliefs about whether the auditory distractors would be easy or difficult to ignore can have an effect on task engagement and subjective distractibility ratings, they do not seem to have an effect on the actual degree to which the auditory distractors disrupt serial recall performance.

Effects of Auditory Distraction on Face Memory

“…The auditory sequences were spoken by a male voice and lasted 8 s each. With this material, a robust changing-state effect on serial recall has been obtained in several previous studies 30,38,40–42,44 . The sounds were played binaurally at about 65 dB (A) using headphones with high-insulation hearing protection covers that were plugged directly into the Apple iMac computer which controlled the experiment.…”

“…Semantic processing of comprehensible speech is no necessary precondition for observing effects of auditory distraction on working-memory processes as disruptive effects are commonly observed with reversed speech as well 19,21–23 . Furthermore, effects of auditory distraction on working-memory processing are not restricted to speech, but are robustly observed with non-speech sounds such as music 19,25–30 or environmental sounds 49,50 .…”

“…Auditory distraction is not limited to speech 19,25–30 . Klatte, Kilcher, and Hellbrück 31 showed that a musical piece played staccato disrupted performance whereas the same piece played legato did not disrupt performance relative to a quiet control condition (see also 27 ).…”

The metacognition of auditory distraction: Judgments about the effects of deviating and changing auditory distractors on cognitive performance

“…While some pioneering studies have focused on metacognitive convictions about the disruptive effects of naturalistic sounds such as speech and music on performance (Alley & Greene, 2008;Ellermeier & Zimmer, 1997;Perham & Vizard, 2011;Röer et al, 2017;Schlittmeier et al, 2008), there is as yet surprisingly little knowledge about people's metacognitive awareness of basic phenomena of auditory distraction. Specifically, the changing-state effect (Jones et al, 1993) and the auditory-deviant effect (Hughes et al, 2005) are seen as key signature findings of auditory distraction (Hughes, 2014) and are among the list of benchmark findings that working memory models should be able to explain (Oberauer et al, 2018).…”

“…While metacognitive judgments about to-be-learned stimuli (judgments of learning) have received much attention for some decades (e.g., Begg et al, 1989 ; Koriat, 1997 ) and still do so (e.g., Besken & Mulligan, 2014 ; Frank & Kuhlmann, 2017 ; Schaper et al, 2019 ; Undorf & Erdfelder, 2015 ), metacognitive judgments about to-be-ignored stimuli (judgments of distraction) have received considerably less attention (but see Ellermeier & Zimmer, 1997 ; Hanczakowski et al, 2017 , 2018 ; Röer et al, 2017 ). However, metacognitive judgments about the effects of task-irrelevant stimuli on performance are of applied relevance because they have a strong influence on how people design their work and learning environments.…”