Marsh, J.E., Hughes, Rob and Jones, D.M. (2009) Interference by process, not content, determines semantic auditory distraction. Cognition, 110 (1).
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Distraction by irrelevant background sound of visually-based cognitive tasks illustrates the vulnerability of attentional selectivity across modalities. Four experiments centred on auditory distraction during tests of memory for visually-presented semantic information. Meaningful irrelevant speech disrupted the free recall of semantic category-exemplars more than meaningless irrelevant sound (Experiment 1). This effect was exacerbated when the irrelevant speech was semantically related to the to-be-remembered material (Experiment 2). Importantly, however, these effects of meaningfulness and semantic relatedness were shown to arise only when instructions emphasized recall by category rather than by serial order (Experiments 3 and 4). The results favor a process-oriented, rather than a structural, approach to the breakdown of attentional selectivity and forgetting: performance is impaired by the similarity of process brought to bear on the relevant and irrelevant material, not the similarity in item content. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
This is a Submitted version This version's date is: 1/1/2009 This item is not peer reviewed
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Deposited by Research Information System (atira) on 24-May-2012 in Royal Holloway Research Online.Last modified on 24-May-2012
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