Auditory distraction can be studied online! A direct comparison between in-Person and online experimentation

* Stage 2 Manuscript in the Journal of Cognitive Psychology. The Stage 1 manuscript included a different title, “Can the Irrelevant Sound Effect be Studied Online?”; However, we used a new title for the Stage 2 manuscript to reflect the findings.

ABSTRACT

Referring to the well-replicated finding that the presence of to-be-ignored sound disrupts short-term memory for serially-presented visual items, the irrelevant sound effect (ISE) is an important benchmark finding within cognitive psychology. The ISE has proven useful in evaluating the structure, function and development of short-term memory. This preregistered report focused on a methodological examination of the paradigm typically used to study the ISE and sought to determine whether the ISE can be reliably studied using the increasingly popular method of online testing. Comparing Psychology students tested online, in-person and participants from an online panel, results demonstrated successful reproduction of the key signature effects of auditory distraction (the changing-state effect and the steady-state effect), albeit smaller effects with the online panel. Our results confirmed the viability of online data collection for auditory distraction research and provided important insights for the accumulation and maintenance of high data quality in internet-based experimentation.

KEYWORDS:

• Auditory distraction
• serial recall
• online experiments**

  ** Journal submission portal would not allow entry of specific key words, therefore “auditory processing”, “short-term memory” and “working memory” were chosen.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

* Stage 2 Manuscript in the Journal of Cognitive Psychology. The Stage 1 manuscript included a different title, “Can the Irrelevant Sound Effect be Studied Online?”; However, we used a new title for the Stage 2 manuscript to reflect the findings.

** Journal submission portal would not allow entry of specific key words, therefore “auditory processing”, “short-term memory” and “working memory” were chosen.

1 Statistical analyses were finally performed using version 0.14 of the JASP statistical software, but with the same priors as described in the preregistration of the study.