Perceptual and cognitive control of auditory distraction

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Cognitive performance such as recall from short-term memory is known to be affected by irrelevant sound. The recent duplex-mechanism account suggests that effects of auditory distraction may result (a) from interference between temporally varying (changing-state) and he process of serial rehearsal or (b) attentional capture due to auditory deviants. It has been found that the deviation effect is sensitive to cognitive control, whereas the interference of changing-state sound is a more automatic process. However, there is also evidence suggesting that enhanced auditory filtering and perceptual control may shield against the interference produced by changing-state sound. This project investigates whether the two forms of auditory distraction can be counteracted through training-related enhancement of perceptual and cognitive control. Based on promising results of a pilot study, we argue that the interference between changing-state sound and serial rehearsal can be attenuated by strengthening perceptual control skills enabling individuals to inhibit task-irrelevant auditory information. This assumption will be tested by training participants on a dichotic listening task requiring continuous inhibition of irrelevant speech information based on acoustical properties. The transfer of a multi-day training on the two forms of auditory distraction will be assessed with a serial and a non-serial short-term memory task before and after training. In line with the duplex-mechanism account, training-related enhancement of auditory perceptual control is expected to reduce the interference effect on serial short-term memory, but it is not expected to reduce the deviation effect (study 1). Given that the deviation effect is sensitive to cognitive control, we further predict that this form of distraction can be reduced through cognitive training. To enhance central functions of cognitive control (e.g., updating and monitoring), participants will be trained on an auditory working memory task (n-back), and training-related enhancement of cognitive control is expected to reduce the deviation effect on serial and non-serial memory tasks, but it is not expected to reduce the interference effect on serial rehearsal (study 2). A further research strategy employed in this project seeks to benefit from naturally occurring, age-dependent differences in perceptual and cognitive control. Specifically, older adults were found to exhibit both reduced working memory capacity and weaker inhibitory control. Here pre-existing differences in working memory capacity (operation span task) and inhibitory control (flanker task) between old and young adults will be used to predict the degree of auditory distraction. As the changing-state and the deviation effects are assumed to be differentially sensitive to perceptual versus cognitive control, we expect the result to reveal the predominant mechanism by which interference from irrelevant sound is exacerbated in old age (study 3).