Two simultaneous talkers distract more than one in simulated multi-talker environments, regardless of overall sound levels typical of open-plan offices

Abstract

The irrelevant speech effect (ISE) characterizes detriment to cognitive task performance in the presence of irrelevant speech. This paper examines whether the ISE varies due to the number of simultaneously active nearby talkers (for up to two talkers), or the overall sound level, within the context of a simulated open-plan office. Two experiments were conducted within a climate-controlled chamber that was set-up as a medium-sized open-plan office. The cognitive tasks performed by the participants included the digit recall task, and a writing task, within a room acoustic simulation of realistic multi-talker speech from spatially separated talkers. Within Experiment 1 (n = 60), an increase in the number of talkers from none (T0) to one (T1), and from one to two (T2) simultaneous talkers resulted in statistically significant decline in the digit recall task performances, with effect sizes of 24% (i.e., T1 vs. T0), and 12% (i.e., T2 vs. T1), respectively. The pauses between words during the writing task were similar for T0 and T1, but showed a statistically significant increase within T2 vs. T1, with an effect size of 12%. The findings of Experiment 1 are inconsistent with the maximally distracting status attributed to T1 in some studies, but is consistent with findings in other studies. Within Experiment 2 (n = 62), the cognitive performance in T2 remained largely invariant between 45 and 57 dB (A-weighted sound pressure levels), which represents a typical range of levels within open-plan offices. This finding is somewhat consistent with previous studies, where the ISE has been shown to be invariant over large changes to the overall level of more-or-less spatially-static single-talker speech. However, the current findings provide a more ecologically-valid representation of multi-talker level-invariance of the ISE. In general, these findings have relevance for characterizing auditory distraction within complex multi-talker environments; both in laboratory studies and actual open-plan offices.