The effects of extraneous speech on visual vigilance performance of children.
First-grade males performed a 30-min visual vigilance task under 5 conditions of auditory background stimulation. The 5 conditions consisted of (1) continuous conversation, in which subjects listened to a tape of conversation spliced so that there were no intervals of silence lasting longer than 3 sec; (2) continuous reverse, in which subjects heard the continuous conversation tape played in reverse; (3) intermittent conversation, in which subjects heard alternating segments of conversation and silence; (4) intermittent reverse, in which subjects heard alternating segments of reverse conversation and silence; and (5) silence control. Compared with silence or continuous stimulation, intermittent stimulation produced better detection regardless of whether or not it was meaningful. High achievers made more correct detections than low achievers, but only in the second and third time periods. Few subjects made errors of commission.
D000124:Achievement; D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D001288:Attention; D001307:Auditory Perception; D002648:Child; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013060:Speech; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D013997:Time Factors; D014796:Visual Perception