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Do Irrelevant Sounds Impair the Maintenance of All Characteristics of Speech in Memory?

Gabriel, D. ; Gaudrain, E. ; Lebrun-Guillaud, G. ; Sheppard, F. ; Tomescu, I. ; Schnider, A.

In: Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2012, vol. 41, no. 6, p. 475-486

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    Titre
    • Do Irrelevant Sounds Impair the Maintenance of All Characteristics of Speech in Memory?
    Auteur
    • Gabriel, D.. Division of Neurorehabilitation, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Geneva University Hospitals, 1211, Geneva 14, Switzerland
    • Gaudrain, E.. Centre for the Neural Basis of Hearing, Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, CB2 3EG, Cambridge, UK
    • Lebrun-Guillaud, G.. CNRS-UMR 5020, Université Claude Bernard Lyon I, Lyon, France
    • Sheppard, F.. Clinical Investigation Center, Inserm CIT 808, Besancon University Hospital, 2 place Saint-Jacques, 25030, Besancon, France
    • Tomescu, I.. Division of Neurorehabilitation, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Geneva University Hospitals, 1211, Geneva 14, Switzerland
    • Schnider, A.. Division of Neurorehabilitation, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Geneva University Hospitals, 1211, Geneva 14, Switzerland
    Type de document
    • Postprint
    Langue
    • Anglais
    Publié dans
    • Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2012, vol. 41, no. 6, p. 475-486. Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com
    Autre version électronique
    Identifiant OAI-PMH
    • oai:doc.rero.ch:322127
    Summary
    Several studies have shown that maintaining in memory some attributes of speech, such as the content or pitch of an interlocutor's message, is markedly reduced in the presence of background sounds made of spectrotemporal variations. However, experimental paradigms showing this interference have only focused on one attribute of speech at a time, and thus differ from real-life situations in which several attributes have to be memorized and maintained simultaneously. It is possible that the interference is even greater in such a case and can occur for a broader range of background sounds. We developed a paradigm in which participants had to maintain the content, pitch and speaker size of auditorily presented speech information and used various auditory distractors to generate interference. We found that only distractors with spectrotemporal variations impaired the detection, which shows that similar interference mechanisms occur whether there are one or more speech attributes to maintain in memory. A high percentage of false alarms was observed with these distractors, suggesting that spectrotemporal variations not only weaken but also modify the information maintained in memory. Lastly, we found that participants were unaware of the interference. These results are similar to those observed in the visual modality