Abstract
Attended speech is comprehended better not only if more acoustic detail is available, but also if it is semantically highly predictable. But can more acoustic detail or higher predictability turn into disadvantages and distract a listener if the speech signal is to be ignored? Also, does the degree of distraction increase for older listeners who typically show a decline in attentional control ability? Adopting the irrelevant-speech paradigm, we tested whether younger (age 23–33 years) and older (60–78 years) listeners’ working memory for the serial order of spoken digits would be disrupted by the presentation of task-irrelevant speech varying in its acoustic detail (using noise-vocoding) and its semantic predictability (of sentence endings). More acoustic detail, but not higher predictability, of task-irrelevant speech aggravated memory interference. This pattern of results did not differ between younger and older listeners, despite generally lower performance in older listeners. Our findings suggest that the focus of attention determines how acoustics and predictability affect the processing of speech: first, as more acoustic detail is known to enhance speech comprehension and memory for speech, we here demonstrate that more acoustic detail of ignored speech enhances the degree of distraction. Second, while higher predictability of attended speech is known to also enhance speech comprehension under acoustically adverse conditions, higher predictability of ignored speech is unable to exert any distracting effect upon working memory performance in younger or older listeners. These findings suggest that features that make attended speech easier to comprehend do not necessarily enhance distraction by ignored speech.
Highlights
Selective attention enables the cognitive system to select and prioritize relevant information from the environment and to filter out irrelevant information (Serences and Kastner, 2014)
In order to assess a participant’s memory for the serial order of digits, we considered digits recalled at their respective position of presentation as “correct,” and all remaining responses as “incorrect.” The objective of this study was to test whether more acoustic detail and higher predictability would enhance the degree of distraction of task-irrelevant speech
We found no significant interaction of noisevocoding and predictability on the proportion of correctly recalled digits (F2,40 = 0.97; p = 0.39; η2p = 0.05; Bayes Factor (BF) = 0.33)
Summary
Selective attention enables the cognitive system to select and prioritize relevant information from the environment and to filter out irrelevant information (Serences and Kastner, 2014). When a speech signal is attended, more acoustic detail and semantic predictability both enhance speech comprehension (e.g., Obleser et al, 2007). Do these features increase the degree of distraction from. It has been shown that high predictability of sentence endings is most beneficial for speech comprehension under intermediate levels of noise-vocoding (Obleser et al, 2007; Hartwigsen et al, 2015). The respective detrimental and beneficial effects of noise-vocoding and predictability have mostly been studied for speech signals that listeners were supposed to attend to. We predicted that more acoustic detail and higher predictability would enhance distraction of to-beignored speech
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