Publication Cover
Experimental Aging Research
An International Journal Devoted to the Scientific Study of the Aging Process
Volume 33, 2007 - Issue 3
571
Views
13
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Original Articles

The Irrelevant Speech Effect and the Level of Interference in Aging

, , , &
Pages 323-339 | Received 25 Aug 2005, Accepted 18 Dec 2005, Published online: 09 May 2007

REFERENCES

  • Baddeley , A. D. ( 1992 ). Working memory . Science , 255 , 556 – 559 .
  • Baddeley , A. D. ( 2003 ). Working memory: Looking back and looking forward . Nature Reviews Neuroscience , 4 , 829 – 839 .
  • Baddeley , A. D. & Salamé , P. ( 1986 ). The unattended speech effect: Perception or memory? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition , 12 , 525 – 529 .
  • Banbury , S. & Berry , D. C. ( 1998 ). Disruption of office-related tasks by speech and office noise . British Journal of Psychology , 89 , 499 – 517 .
  • Beaman , C. P. ( 2005 ). Irrelevant sound effects amongst younger and older adults: Objective findings and subjective insights . European Journal of Cognitive Psychology , 17 , 241 – 265 .
  • Belleville , S. , Rouleau , N. , Van der Linden , M. , & Collette , F. ( 2003 ). Effect of manipulation and irrelevant noise on working memory capacity of patients with Alzheimer's dementia . Neuropsychology , 17 , 69 – 81 .
  • Boman , E. , Enmarker , I. , & Hygge , S. ( 2005 ). Strength of noise effects on memory as a function of noise source and age . Noise & Health , 7 , 11 – 26 .
  • Braver , T. S. & Barch , D. M. ( 2002 ). A theory of cognitive control, aging cognition, and neuromodulation . Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews , 26 , 809 – 817 .
  • Bridges , A. M. & Jones , D. M. ( 1996 ). Word dose in the disruption of serial recall by irrelevant speech: Phonological confusions or changing state? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology , 49A , 919 – 939 .
  • Buchner , A. , Irmen , L. , & Erdfelder , E. ( 1996 ). On the irrelevance of semantic information for the “irrelevant speech” effect . Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology , 49A , 765 – 779 .
  • Buchner , A. , Steffens , M. C. , Irmen , L. , & Wender , K. F. ( 1998 ). Irrelevant auditory material affects counting . Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition , 24 , 48 – 67 .
  • De Jong , R. , Coles , M. G. H. , & Logan , G. D. ( 1995 ). Strategies and mechanisms in nonselective and selective inhibitory motor control . Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance , 21 , 498 – 511 .
  • De Jong , P. F. & Das-Smaal , E. A. (1990). The Star Counting Test: An attention test for children. Personality and Individual Differences , 11, 597–604.
  • De Jong , P. F. & Das-Smaal , E. A. ( 1995 ). Attention and intelligence: The validity of the Star Counting Test . Journal of Educational Psychology , 87 , 80 – 92 .
  • Enmarker , I. ( 2004 ). The effects of meaningful irrelevant speech and road traffic noise on teachers’ attention, episodic and semantic memory . Scandinavian Journal of Psychology , 45 , 393 – 405 .
  • Faul , F. & Erdfelder , E. ( 1992 ). GPOWER: A priori, post-hoc, and compromise power analyses for MS-DOS [Computer program]. Bonn , Germany : Bonn Unversity, Department of Psychology .
  • Gisselgård , J. , Petersson , K. M. , & Ingvar , M. ( 2004 ). The irrelevant speech effect and working memory load . NeuroImage , 22 , 1107 – 1116 .
  • Hasher , L. , Stoltzfus , E. R. , Zacks , R. T. , & Rypma , B. ( 1991 ). Age and inhibition . Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition , 17 , 163 – 169 .
  • Hasher , L. & Zacks , R. T. ( 1988 ). Working memory, comprehension, and aging: A review and a new view . In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory (vol. 22 , pp. 193 – 225 ). San Diego : Academic Press .
  • Houx , P. J. , Jolles , J. , & Vreeling , F. W. ( 1993 ). Stroop interference: Aging effects assessed with the Stroop Color-Word Test . Experimental Aging Research , 19 , 209 – 224 .
  • Hygge , S. , Boman , E. , & Enmarker , I. ( 2003 ). The effects of road traffic noise and meaningful irrelevant speech on different memory systems . Scandinavian Journal of Psychology , 44 , 13 – 21 .
  • Jolles , J. , Houx , P. J. , Van Boxtel , M. P. J. , & Ponds , R. W. H. M. (Eds.). ( 1995 ). The Maastricht Aging Study: Determinants of cognitive aging . Maastricht , The Netherlands : Neuropsych Publishers .
  • Jones , D. M. ( 1985 ). The fate of the unattended stimulus: Irrelevant speech and cognition . Applied Cognitive Psychology , 9 , S23 – S38 .
  • Jones , D. M. , Alford , D. , Bridges , A. , Tremblay , S. , & Macken , B. ( 1999 ). Organizational factors in selective attention: The interplay of acoustic distinctiveness and auditory streaming in the irrelevant sound effect . Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition , 25 , 464 – 473 .
  • Jones , D. M. & Macken , W. J. ( 1993 ). Irrelevant tones produce an irrelevant speech effect: Implications for phonological coding in working memory . Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition , 19 , 369 – 381 .
  • Jones , D. M. & Macken , W. J. ( 1995 ). Phonological similarity in the irrelevant speech effect: Within- or between-stream similarity? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition , 21 , 103 – 133 .
  • Jones , D. M. , Madden , C. A. , & Miles , C. ( 1992 ). Privileged access by irrelevant speech to short-term memory: The role of changing state . Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology , 44A , 645 – 669 .
  • LeCompte , D. C. , Neely , C. B. , & Wilson , J. R. ( 1997 ). Irrelevant speech and irrelevant tones: The relative importance of speech to the irrelevant speech effect . Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition , 23 , 472 – 483 .
  • Li , L. , Daneman , M. , Qi , J. G. , & Schneider , B. A. (2004). Does the information content of an irrelevant source differentially affect spoken word recognition in younger and older adults? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance , 30, 1077–1091.
  • Logie , R. H. & Baddeley , A. D. ( 1987 ). Cognitive processes in counting . Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition , 13 , 310 – 326 .
  • McDowd , J. M. ( 1995 ). Inhibition in attention and aging . Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences , 52B , P265 – P273 .
  • Meijer , W.A. , De Groot , R.H.M. , Van Boxtel , M.P.J. , Van Gerven , P.W.M. , & Jolles , J. ( 2006 ). Verbal learning and aging: Combined effects of irrelevant speech, interstimulus interval, and education . Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences , 61B , P285 – P294 .
  • Miles , C. , Jones , D. M. , & Madden , C. A. ( 1991 ). Locus of the irrelevant speech effect in short-term memory . Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition , 17 , 578 – 584 .
  • Molander , B. & Bäckman , L. ( 1990 ). Age differences in the effects of background noise on motor and memory performance in a precision sport . Experimental Aging Research , 16 , 55 – 60 .
  • Murphy , D. R. , McDowd , J. M. , & Wilcox , K. A. ( 1999 ). Inhibition and aging: Similarities between younger and older adults as revealed by the processing of unattended auditory information . Psychology and Aging , 14 , 44 – 59 .
  • Neely , C. B. & LeCompte , D. C. ( 1999 ). The importance of semantic similarity to the irrelevant speech effect . Memory & Cognition , 27 , 37 – 44 .
  • Oswald , C. J. P. , Tremblay , S. , & Jones , D. M. ( 2000 ). Disruption of comprehension by the meaning of irrelevant sound . Memory , 8 , 345 – 350 .
  • Perfect , T. J. & Maylor , E. A. ( 2000 ). Rejecting the dull hypothesis: The relation between method and theory in cognitive aging research . In T. J. Perfect & E. A. Maylor (Eds.), Models of cognitive aging (pp. 1 – 18 ). Oxford , England : Oxford University Press .
  • Rouleau , N. & Belleville , S. ( 1996 ). Irrelevant speech effect in aging: An assessment of inhibitory processes in working memory . Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences , 51B , P356 – P363 .
  • Salamé , P. & Baddeley , A. D. ( 1982 ). Disruption of short-term memory by unattended speech: Implications for the structure of working memory . Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior , 21 , 150 – 164 .
  • Salamé , P. & Baddeley , A. D. ( 1989 ). Effects of background music on phonological short-term memory . Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology , 41A , 107 – 122 .
  • Salthouse , T. A. ( 1996 ). The processing-speed theory of adult age differences in cognition . Psychological Review , 103 , 403 – 428 .
  • Schneider , B. A. , Daneman , M. , Murphy , D. R. , & Kwong See , S. ( 2000 ). Listening to discourse in distracting settings: The effects of aging . Psychology and Aging , 15 , 110 – 125 .
  • Schneider , B. A. , Daneman , M. , & Pichora-Fuller , K. ( 2002 ). Listening in aging adults: From discourse comprehension to psychoacoustics . Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology , 56 , 139 – 152 .
  • Stern , Y. ( 2002 ). What is cognitive reserve? Theory and research application of the reserve concept . Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , 8 , 448 – 460 .
  • Stoltzfus , E. R. , Hasher , L. , Zacks , R. T. , Ulivi , M. S. , & Goldstein , D. (1993). Investigations of inhibition and interference in younger and older adults. Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences , 48, P179–P188.
  • Tisserand , D. J. & Jolles , J. ( 2003 ). On the involvement of prefrontal networks in cognitive ageing . Cortex , 39 , 1107 – 1128 .
  • Tremblay , S. , Nicholls , A. P. , Alford , D. , & Jones , D. M. ( 2000 ). The irrelevant sound effect: Does speech play a special role? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition , 26 , 1750 – 1754 .
  • Van den Wildenberg , W. P. M. , & Van der Molen , M. W. ( 2004 ). Developmental trends in simple and selective inhibition of compatible and incompatible responses . Journal of Experimental Child Psychology , 87 , 201 – 220 .
  • Van der Elst , W. , Van Boxtel , M. P. J. , Van Breukelen , G. J. P. , & Jolles , J. ( 2005 ). Rey's Verbal Learning Test: Normative data for 1,855 healthy participants aged 24–81 years and the influence of age, sex, education, and mode of presentation . Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society , 11 , 290 – 302 .

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.