Irrelevant Speech Effect
Abstract
Eight students participated in a study of the Irrelevant Speech Effect. Irrelevant speech disrupts immediate serial recall. In this study we test the disruptive effects of irrelevant speech on serial recall. In this experiment participants saw a list of randomly ordered digits 1-9. During the some trials they heard irrelevant speech in the background, while other trials were quiet. This irrelevant speech was a passage from Franz Kafka in German (Francis, Neath, & VanHorn, 2008). We found a main effect of Trial Type, which were the quiet and irrelevant speech background conditions. This is evidence that the irrelevant speech effect did take place.
Irrelevant Speech Effect The irrelevant speech effect is the impairment if performance in memory tasks as a result of irrelevant background speech (Colle & Welsh, 1976; Jones & Macken, 1993; LeCompte, Neely & Wilson, 1997). Previous research has found that irrelevant speech impairs serial recall tasks, so our experiment sets out to test this research on immediate serial recall. Irrelevant speech is present in our everyday life. For instance, when a student is at school studying they are often subject to the irrelevant speech of other students. This can be very distracting, and affect their ability to take in the information that they are trying to learn. Irrelevant speech is also common to many other environments, such as work environments. Performance within workplace situations such as schoolrooms, open-plan offices or trading areas might benefit from a reduction in auditory distraction (Beaman, 2005). The irrelevant speech effect also has other important suggestions about the nature of memory. Previous research has proposed that auditory stimuli, such as irrelevant speech, are automatically entered into a phonological store where they are represented as phonemes. Visual stimuli, on the other hand, have to be rehearsed subvocally and then translated into phonemes to be
Eight students participated in a study of the Irrelevant Speech Effect. Irrelevant speech disrupts immediate serial recall. In this study we test the disruptive effects of irrelevant speech on serial recall. In this experiment participants saw a list of randomly ordered digits 1-9. During the some trials they heard irrelevant speech in the background, while other trials were quiet. This irrelevant speech was a passage from Franz Kafka in German (Francis, Neath, & VanHorn, 2008). We found a main effect of Trial Type, which were the quiet and irrelevant speech background conditions. This is evidence that the irrelevant speech effect did take place.
Irrelevant Speech Effect The irrelevant speech effect is the impairment if performance in memory tasks as a result of irrelevant background speech (Colle & Welsh, 1976; Jones & Macken, 1993; LeCompte, Neely & Wilson, 1997). Previous research has found that irrelevant speech impairs serial recall tasks, so our experiment sets out to test this research on immediate serial recall. Irrelevant speech is present in our everyday life. For instance, when a student is at school studying they are often subject to the irrelevant speech of other students. This can be very distracting, and affect their ability to take in the information that they are trying to learn. Irrelevant speech is also common to many other environments, such as work environments. Performance within workplace situations such as schoolrooms, open-plan offices or trading areas might benefit from a reduction in auditory distraction (Beaman, 2005). The irrelevant speech effect also has other important suggestions about the nature of memory. Previous research has proposed that auditory stimuli, such as irrelevant speech, are automatically entered into a phonological store where they are represented as phonemes. Visual stimuli, on the other hand, have to be rehearsed subvocally and then translated into phonemes to be
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