Investigating the Disturbance Impact of Background Speech on Verbal and Visual-Spatial Short-Term Memory: On the Differential Contributions of Changing-State and Phonology to the Irrelevant Sound Effect

The empirically robust phenomenon of impaired verbal short-term memory due to task-irrelevant background speech is known as the Irrelevant Sound Effect (ISE). Yet, underlying cognitive mechanisms are still not fully resolved, like whether phonology-based interference contributes disruptive effect on serial recall. Thus, we tested ISE for such a speech-specific aspect by varying phonological content irrelevant and nature task. Furthermore, also varied changing-state characteristic speech. Therefore, visual-verbal visual-spatial recall 70 participants each was measured during silence syllable series in (unaltered vs. sinewave speech) (one repeatedly presented successively changing syllables). Both phonology had significant independent impacts two tasks, both effects were unrelated participants’ working capacity. Changing-state sequences more disturbing than steady-state sounds but same direction tasks. Whereas unaltered their phonologically reduced versions, this opposite In latter task, however, only performance significantly compared condition. summary, our results indicate that there speech-specific, content, which an attention-independent presumably restricted memory.