A body of laboratory work is reviewed suggesting that auditory distraction comes in two
functionally distinct forms. Interference‐by‐process is produced when the involuntary …

The influence of top-down cognitive control on 2 putatively distinct forms of distraction was
investigated. Attentional capture by a task-irrelevant auditory deviation (eg, a female-spoken …

The occurrence of an unexpected, infrequent sound in an otherwise homogeneous auditory
background tends to disrupt the ongoing cognitive task. This “deviation effect” is typically …

Within the soundscapes of open-plan offices, irrelevant speech has consistently been
reported as the most distracting, and causing performance decrements for workers …

Background music has been claimed to enhance people's creativity. In three experiments,
we investigated the impact of background music on performance of Compound Remote …

This article reports 2 experiments that examine techniques to shield against the potentially
disruptive effects of task-irrelevant background speech on proofreading. The participants …

Task-irrelevant speech impairs short-term serial recall appreciably. On the interference-by-
process account, the processing of physical (ie, precategorical) changes in speech yields …

Speech transmission index (STI) is an objective measure of the acoustic properties of office
environments and is used to specify norms for acceptable acoustic work conditions. Yet, the …

Recent research on involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs) has shown that these
memories can be elicited and studied in the laboratory under controlled conditions …

Students can be disturbed by background noise while working in an open-plan study
environment. To improve the acoustic quality of open-plan study environments a study was …