Hughes, R. 1 , Hurlstone, M. 1 , Vachon, F. 2 & Jones, D. 1
1 Cardiff University
2 Université Laval, Quebec
It is well established that a sound deviating in some way from the prevailing context captures attention and thereby disrupts cognitive performance even when such performance is based on visual information. In the present study, we showed that this form of auditory distraction is resistible through the complementary action of three putatively quite distinct factors: task encoding load, foreknowledge regarding an upcoming deviation, and individual differences in working memory capacity. The disruptive impact of a voice-deviation within a task-irrelevant speech sequence (i.e., one speech token presented in a different voice from the remainder) during a visual-verbal serial recall task was eliminated both when task encoding load was increased by changing the perceptual discriminability of the to-be-remembered stimuli and also when foreknowledge regarding an upcoming deviation was provided. Moreover, extending an observation made previously using tone sequences (Sorqvist, 2010), individuals low in working memory capacity-as measured by the operation span task-showed a greater susceptibility to attentional capture by the deviation within the irrelevant speech. The results suggest that auditory distraction by attentional capture is subject to a top-down blocking mechanism.