The automaticity of semantic processing revisited: Auditory distraction by a categorical deviation.

Vachon, François; Marsh, John E.; Labonté, Katherine · 2020 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1037/xge0000714

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Summary

This study investigates the debate regarding the automaticity of semantic processing, specifically whether the meaning of irrelevant auditory stimuli is accessed autonomously or conditionally based on top-down cognitive control. While traditional views suggest semantic processing is fully automatic, recent evidence indicates it may be contingent on task sets and goals. To resolve this, the authors utilized a novel approach: assessing the distractive power of a "categorical deviation" in irrelevant auditory streams. The core research question was whether a semantic change in non-significant, to-be-ignored sounds (e.g., a digit spoken among letters) could disrupt an unrelated visual focal task, thereby demonstrating preattentive, automatic semantic extraction. The researchers conducted seven experiments using the irrelevant sound paradigm. Participants performed a visual serial recall task (recalling digits, letters, or dot orders) while ignoring concurrent auditory sequences of speech tokens. The auditory stimuli were acoustically homogenous but semantically consistent, except for infrequent "deviant" trials where a single item from a different semantic category was inserted (e.g., a letter among digits). This design minimized goal-dependent processing by using tasks that prioritized serial order over semantic content and by ensuring the distractors had no personal or emotional significance. The study aimed to diagnose specific features of automaticity—goal-independence, unintentionality, and uncontrollability—by testing if distraction occurred regardless of the active task set and was resistant to top-down control manipulations. The results established a robust "categorical deviation effect." Across the experiments, the presence of a semantically deviant auditory item significantly disrupted performance on the visual serial recall task compared to control trials with consistent semantic categories. Crucially, this distraction occurred even when the auditory content was unrelated to the visual task and when the task set was biased toward non-semantic processing. The findings indicated that the semantic content of the irrelevant sound was extracted preattentively and involuntarily. The distraction was non-contingent on the activated task set and appeared resistant to attempts at top-down control, suggesting that the semantic relationship between consecutive words in unattended speech is processed automatically. These findings provide strong evidence against the view that semantic processing is merely conditionally automatic. By demonstrating that semantic activation occurs unintentionally and is goal-independent in the context of irrelevant auditory distraction, the study supports the hypothesis that semantic processing can be fully automatic. The results imply that the cognitive system automatically extracts the meaning of environmental sounds, even when they are personally non-significant and irrelevant to current goals. This challenges existing models that posit semantic access requires alignment with active cognitive templates, suggesting instead that semantic processing is an ineluctable component of auditory perception that can capture attention independently of higher-level control.

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• auditory