Role of habituation in the irrelevant sound effect: Evidence from the effects of token set size and rate of transition.

Abstract

The disruption of serial recall by irrelevant sound was explored by examining the effect of the number of different tokens (token set size) and by varying the transition rate between different tokens. Two sets of predictions were contrasted. One, based on changing state, posited that a mismatch in physical composition between immediately successive stimuli was the important factor, leading to the prediction that disruption would increase as the token set size increased from 1 to 2 but would show no increase above that. Another, based on habituation, predicted that increasing the set size would increase disruption monotonically, on the grounds that for a given exposure each token would be relatively less habituated. Generally, the results showed the most marked increase in disruption occurred when the token set increased from 1 to 2, giving some support to the changing state hypothesis.

Coherence of the irrelevant-sound effect: Individual profiles of short-term memory and susceptibility to task-irrelevant materials

“…None of the analyses indicated any differences in the disruption caused by the variations of the tone conditions. This is consistent with previous research by Tremblay and Jones (1998) showing that the "token set size" does not increase the amount of disruption when the number of tokens is larger than two.…”

The irrelevant-speech effect and children: theoretical implications of developmental change

“…Support for the habituation hypothesis has been found in a variety of tasks (Elliott & Cowan, 2001;Lorch, Anderson, & Well, 1984;Tipper et al, 1989;Waters, McDonald, & Koresko, 1977). However, some studies have not yielded evidence of habituation to irrelevant speech (Hellbrück, Kuwano, & Namba, 1996;Tremblay & Jones, 1998), and the role of attention in the ISE remains controversial.…”

“…A significant difference between speech and tones has not been consistently obtained in adults in the ISE literature. Although tones can impair performance, the relative amounts of disruption caused by speech versus tone stimuli has varied across experiments LeCompte, 1994;LeCompte, Neely, & Wilson, 1997;Tremblay & Jones, 1998).…”

The phonological loop and the irrelevant speech effect: Some comments on Neath (2000)

“…As mentioned earlier, the phonological loop hypothesis assumes that suppression operates by preempting the articulatory process that is necessary for both rehearsal and the translation of visual stimuli into a phonological memory code. Problems for the unitary hy-NOTES AND COMMENT 547 pothesis espoused by Neath (2000) and by Jones and Tremblay (2000) include the fact that a single articulated item dramatically disrupts recall performance (Murray, 1968), while repeatedly hearing a single irrelevant item has little or no effect (Tremblay & Jones, 1998). The suggestion that the substantially larger effect of suppression reflects its attentional cost is inconsistent with the lack of an effect ofsuppression on such complex and attentionally demanding tasks as memory for chess positions and of the capacity to select the optimum next chess move (Robbins et aI., 1996;Saari luoma, 1995).…”