Attentional capture by deviant sounds: A noncontingent form of auditory distraction?

Vachon, François; Labonté, Katherine; Marsh, John E. · 2017 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1037/xlm0000330

archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified

Get this paper ↗ (DOI — opens at the source; we link to it, we don't host it)

Summary

This study investigates whether the "deviation effect"—the disruption of cognitive tasks by unexpected, infrequent sounds—is a non-contingent, stimulus-driven form of attentional capture or a task-contingent mechanism dependent on the relationship between the distractor and the focal task. While the duplex-mechanism account of auditory distraction posits that attentional capture is a general phenomenon independent of task requirements, competing theories suggest that distraction occurs only when the deviant shares attributes with the task-relevant stimuli or conveys goal-directed information. To resolve this debate, the authors conducted two experiments examining the impact of verbal and spatial auditory deviants on verbal and spatial short-term memory (STM) tasks. In Experiment 1, participants performed order-reconstruction tasks for either verbal stimuli (digits) or spatial stimuli (dots) while ignoring an irrelevant auditory stream. The auditory stream consisted of repeated spoken letters, with rare trials containing either a verbal deviant (a change in letter identity) or a spatial deviant (a change in sound location). Results showed that both verbal and spatial deviants significantly impaired performance in both verbal and spatial recall tasks. Crucially, there was no significant interaction between the type of task and the type of deviation, indicating that the disruptive power of the deviants was similar regardless of domain overlap. Experiment 2 replicated this design using a missing-item task, which does not require serial rehearsal, to test if the effect depended on specific processing requirements. The findings were consistent with Experiment 1: both verbal and spatial deviants hindered performance in both verbal and spatial missing-item tasks, with no evidence of domain-specific interference. The study concludes that attentional capture by deviant sounds is a non-contingent, domain-general form of auditory distraction. The results support the duplex-mechanism account, demonstrating that the deviation effect disrupts ongoing cognitive activity regardless of the nature of the focal task or the relationship between the relevant and irrelevant stimuli. This challenges theoretical views that suggest attentional capture is modulated by task sets or contingent on the behavioral relevance of the distractor’s features. By establishing that cross-domain interference occurs even in tasks with different processing demands, the authors provide strong empirical evidence that the neuronal model’s detection of auditory deviation triggers an involuntary orienting response that is independent of current goals.

Provenance

The full processing record for this entry. Every stage of this paper's journey through the pipeline is logged — what ran, with which tool and model, how many attempts it took, and when it last completed.

Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-25; verification: verified.

Topics

Ranked by relevance to this paper. Hover a topic for its definition.

• auditory
• attention selective divided