title: Irrelevant speech effects and sequence learning.
abstract: The irrelevant speech effect is the finding that performance on serial recall tasks is impaired by the presence of irrelevant background speech. According to the object-oriented episodic record (O-OER) model, this impairment is due to a conflict of order information from two different sources: the seriation of the irrelevant speech and the rehearsal of the order of the to-be-remembered items. We tested the model's prediction that irrelevant speech should impair performance on other tasks that involve seriation. Experiments 1 and 2 verified that both an irrelevant speech effect and a changing state effect would obtain in a between-subjects design in which a standard serial recall measure was used, allowing employment of a between-subjects design in subsequent experiments. Experiment 3 showed that performance on a sequence-learning task was impaired by the presence of irrelevant speech, and Experiment 4 verified that performance is worse when the irrelevant speech changes more (the changing state effect). These findings support the prediction made by the O-OER model that one essential component to the irrelevant speech effect is serial order information.
authors.affiliation: Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA.
authors.forename: Lisa A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Farley
authors.forename: Ian
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Neath
authors.forename: David W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Allbritton
authors.forename: Aimée M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Surprenant
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D011939:Mental Recall; D012660:Semantics; D013060:Speech