About distraction: Cognitive control processes in the service of distraction resistance

无论是音乐、环境声音还是人类语言的形式，听觉分心伴随着我们日常活动的大部分，包括学习和记忆。实验室和现场研究表明，这对性能产生了实质性的影响。我们也知道，即使声音不太响，这种情况也会发生——超过可听阈值的效果可能和响亮的声音一样具有破坏性。特别是，广泛的记忆过程被不相关声音的存在扰乱。然而，几乎所有之前的研究都是基于这样的假设：在这些情况下，个人是一个被动的行动者，无法控制声音如何或是否会影响他们的表现。直到最近，人们是否能够并且确实自发地抵消听觉分心的负面影响的问题才出现。在听觉干扰的情况下，人们是否会改变自己的行为，以获得与没有干扰时相同的记忆表现，或者干扰的存在也会干扰这种策略？本项目旨在回答这个问题。在元记忆领域几十年的研究已经揭示了人们可以采用的大量策略来控制他们的记忆表现。最明显的是，人们可以决定他们想要学习多长时间，学习时间越长，记忆力越好。其他被广泛研究的学习策略涉及学习情节的间隔（相对于集中）和学习材料的深度语义阐述。提高记忆输出质量的策略也可以用于检索，例如保留可能不准确的信息，以及控制记忆搜索的长度。原则上，所有这些策略都可以在存在听觉干扰的情况下使用，以减轻其破坏性影响。然而，当人们可以自由地控制他们的编码和检索操作时，他们也可能不适应地使用这种自由。例如，当存在听觉干扰时，人们可以延长学习时间来补偿干扰的破坏性影响，或者他们可以缩短学习时间，从而进一步降低记忆表现。目前尚不清楚的是，从记忆中学习和检索信息的有效策略是否能弥补听觉分心的负面影响，还是听觉分心本身就受到了损害，从而导致了更明显的记忆障碍。这项研究的结果对于我们理解人们在听觉干扰下的功能非常重要，因此，对于我们理解在教室、办公室、呼叫中心或更普遍的任何工作环境（包括安全关键环境）中促进表现的过程具有重要意义。重要的是，这个项目的结果也将有助于我们对心理操作管理的总体理解。该项目将为我们提供信息，了解当表现受到潜在分心来源的威胁时，人们有多大程度的能力和意愿修改学习和检索策略。

Whether in the form of music, environmental sounds or human speech, auditory distraction accompanies substantial parts of our everyday activities, including learning and remembering. Laboratory and field studies have shown that this makes a material difference to performance. We also know that this occurs even when the sound is not loud - effects just above the threshold of audibility may be just as disruptive as loud sound. In particular, a broad spectrum of memory processes is disrupted by the presence of irrelevant sound. However, nearly all previous research has worked on the assumption that the individual is a passive agent in these circumstances and has no control over how or if the sound impacts upon performance. Only recently has the issue of whether people can and do spontaneously counteract the negative effects of auditory distraction arisen. Do people modify their behaviour under conditions of auditory distraction to attain memory performance equivalent to performance in the absence of distraction, or does the presence of distraction also interfere with such strategies? The present project aims at answering this question. Decades of research in the area of metamemory has revealed a wealth of strategies people can deploy to control their memory performance. Most obviously, people can decide for how long they wish to study to-be-remembered material, with longer study times leading to better memory performance. Other widely investigated learning strategies pertain to spacing (vs. massing) of study episodes and deep semantic elaboration of the study material. Strategies to enhance the quality of memory output can also be employed at retrieval, for example withholding information that may be inaccurate, and controlling the length of a memory search. All of these strategies could, in principle, be deployed in the presence of auditory distraction to mitigate its disruptive effects. However, whenever people are free to control their encoding and retrieval operations, they could also use this freedom maladaptively. For example, when auditory distraction is present people could extend their study times to compensate for the disruptive effect of distraction or they could shorten their study times, reducing memory performance even further. It remains to be established whether the effective deployment of strategies used to study and retrieve information from memory serves to compensate for the negative effects of auditory distraction or whether it is itself impaired by auditory distraction, leading to an even more pronounced memory impairment.The results of the research are important for our understanding of people's functioning in the presence of auditory distraction and, as such, have important consequences for our understanding of the processes contributing to performance in settings as diverse as classrooms, offices, call centres, or, more generally, any working environment, including safety-critical environments. Importantly, the results of this project will also contribute to our general understanding of the governance of mental operations. The project will provide us with information on the extent to which people are capable and willing to modify learning and retrieval strategies when performance is under threat from sources of potential distraction.