The disruptive effects of deviant and changing auditory distractors: A test of theories of auditory distraction

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The duplex model is often used to explain phenomena of auditory distraction. The model distinguishes between two types of short-term memory disruption: The disruption of short-term memory by changing auditory distractors (the changing-state-effect) is attributed to a preattentive, obligatory processing of order information among distractors which is assumed to interfere with the maintenance of order information among the target items. The distraction by auditory deviants that disrupt a regular sequence of similar distractors (the deviance effect) is attributed to an attention shift away from the primary task. An alternative to the duplex model is implemented in theories that attribute both phenomena of auditory distraction to attention shifts. At first sight, the second explanation seems more attractive because it is more parsimonious. However, the distinction between two fundamentally different types of auditory distraction seems to be backed up by results that show a dissociation between the changing-state effect and the deviance effect. A close examination of these results shows that they cannot be clearly interpreted in favor of the duplex model because alternative explanations are possible, and the often-cited dissociations refer to comparisons between studies with different methodological approaches. Therefore, the present research project aims at providing a fair and critical test of both models of auditory distraction in a series of experiments in which the changing-state-effect and the deviance effect are compared directly.