Sound Source Location Modulates the Irrelevant-sound Effect

Overview

Journal Mem Cognit

Specialty Psychology

Date 2008 May 22

PMID 18491501

Citations 7

Authors

Axel Buchner

Raoul Bell

Klaus Rothermund

Dirk Wentura

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Participants memorized lists of visually presented digits in silence or while ignoring distractor sounds that either came from the front and thus from the direction in which participants' attention was oriented, or from behind. Distractor sounds impaired recall performance, but the largest impairment was observed when the sound source was directionally close to the frontal visual target display. The results are consistent with the assumption of cross-modal attentional links in models of attention, and they are problematic for explanations of the irrelevant-sound effect within working memory models that do not specify an explicit role of attention in the maintenance of information for immediate serial recall.

Citing Articles

Impact of irrelevant speech and non-speech sounds on serial recall of verbal and spatial items in children and adults.

Leist L, Lachmann T, Klatte M Sci Rep. 2025; 15(1):1951.

PMID: 39809959 PMC: 11732993. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-85855-w.

Differential Effects of Task-Irrelevant Monaural and Binaural Classroom Scenarios on Children's and Adults' Speech Perception, Listening Comprehension, and Visual-Verbal Short-Term Memory.

Leist L, Breuer C, Yadav M, Fremerey S, Fels J, Raake A Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022; 19(23).

PMID: 36498071 PMC: 9738007. DOI: 10.3390/ijerph192315998.

Identifying Listeners Whose Speech Intelligibility Depends on a Quiet Extra Moment After a Sentence.

Gianakas S, Fitzgerald M, Winn M J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2022; 65(12):4852-4865.

PMID: 36472938 PMC: 9934912. DOI: 10.1044/2022_JSLHR-21-00622.

Irrelevant music: How suprasegmental changes of a melody's tempo and mode affect the disruptive potential of music on serial recall.

Schweppe J, Knigge J Mem Cognit. 2020; 48(6):982-993.

PMID: 32385674 PMC: 7381464. DOI: 10.3758/s13421-020-01037-1.

Spatial Integration and the Underlying Mechanisms of Cross-Modality Interference.

Lutfi-Proctor D, Elliott E, Golob E J Cogn. 2019; 2(1):2.

PMID: 31517222 PMC: 6646940. DOI: 10.5334/joc.5.

References

HUBLET C, Morais J, Bertelson P . Spatial effects in speech perception in the absence of spatial competition. Perception. 1977; 6(4):461-6. DOI: 10.1068/p060461. View

Neely C, Lecompte D . The importance of semantic similarity to the irrelevant speech effect. Mem Cognit. 1999; 27(1):37-44. DOI: 10.3758/bf03201211. View

Buchner A, Mehl B, Rothermund K, Wentura D . Artificially induced valence of distractor words increases the effects of irrelevant speech on serial recall. Mem Cognit. 2006; 34(5):1055-62. DOI: 10.3758/bf03193252. View

Jones D, ALFORD D, Macken W, Banbury S, Tremblay S . Interference from degraded auditory stimuli: linear effects of changing-state in the irrelevant sequence. J Acoust Soc Am. 2000; 108(3 Pt 1):1082-8. DOI: 10.1121/1.1288412. View

Campbell T, Winkler I, Kujala T, Naatanen R . The N1 hypothesis and irrelevant sound: evidence from token set size effects. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res. 2003; 18(1):39-47. DOI: 10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2003.09.001. View

Faul F, Erdfelder E, Lang A, Buchner A . G*Power 3: a flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behav Res Methods. 2007; 39(2):175-91. DOI: 10.3758/bf03193146. View

Jones D, Tremblay S . Interference in memory by process or content? A reply to Neath (2000). Psychon Bull Rev. 2000; 7(3):550-8. DOI: 10.3758/bf03214370. View

Spence C, Read L . Speech shadowing while driving: on the difficulty of splitting attention between eye and ear. Psychol Sci. 2003; 14(3):251-6. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9280.02439. View

Elliott E . The irrelevant-speech effect and children: theoretical implications of developmental change. Mem Cognit. 2002; 30(3):478-87. DOI: 10.3758/bf03194948. View

10.

Spence C, Ranson J, Driver J . Cross-modal selective attention: on the difficulty of ignoring sounds at the locus of visual attention. Percept Psychophys. 2000; 62(2):410-24. DOI: 10.3758/bf03205560. View

11.

Campbell T . The cognitive neuroscience of auditory distraction. Trends Cogn Sci. 2005; 9(1):3-5. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2004.11.002. View

12.

Banbury S, Macken W, Tremblay S, Jones D . Auditory distraction and short-term memory: phenomena and practical implications. Hum Factors. 2001; 43(1):12-29. DOI: 10.1518/001872001775992462. View

13.

Lecompte D, Shaibe D . On the irrelevance of phonological similarity to the irrelevant speech effect. Q J Exp Psychol A. 1997; 50(1):100-18. DOI: 10.1080/713755679. View

14.

Langendijk E, Bronkhorst A . Contribution of spectral cues to human sound localization. J Acoust Soc Am. 2002; 112(4):1583-96. DOI: 10.1121/1.1501901. View

15.

HUBLET C, Morais J, Bertelson P . Spatial constraints on focused attention: beyond the right-side advantage. Perception. 1976; 5(1):3-8. DOI: 10.1068/p050003. View

16.

Neath I . Modeling the effects of irrelevant speech on memory. Psychon Bull Rev. 2000; 7(3):403-23. DOI: 10.3758/bf03214356. View

17.

Ellermeier W, Hellbruck J . Is level irrelevant in "irrelevant speech"? Effects of loudness, signal-to-noise ratio, and binaural unmasking. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 1999; 24(5):1406-14. DOI: 10.1037//0096-1523.24.5.1406. View

18.

Eimer M, Schroger E . ERP effects of intermodal attention and cross-modal links in spatial attention. Psychophysiology. 1998; 35(3):313-27. DOI: 10.1017/s004857729897086x. View

19.

Ward L, McDonald J, Lin D . On asymmetries in cross-modal spatial attention orienting. Percept Psychophys. 2000; 62(6):1258-64. DOI: 10.3758/bf03212127. View

20.

Buchner A, Rothermund K, Wentura D, Mehl B . Valence of distractor words increases the effects of irrelevant speech on serial recall. Mem Cognit. 2004; 32(5):722-31. DOI: 10.3758/bf03195862. View