Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

The irrelevant sound effect: does speech play a special role?

S Tremblay1, A P Nicholls, D Alford

  • 1School of Psychology, Cardiff University, United Kingdom. tremblay@cardiff.ac.uk

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition
|February 24, 2001
PubMed
Summary

Irrelevant sounds disrupt memory for order. This study found that the acoustic properties of sound, not whether it

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Evidence for the Collective Nature of Radial Flow in Pb+Pb Collisions with the ATLAS Detector.

Physical review letters·2026
Same author

Long-Range Transverse-Momentum Correlations and Radial Flow in Pb-Pb Collisions at the LHC.

Physical review letters·2026
Same author

Evidence for the Dimuon Decay of the Higgs Boson in pp Collisions with the ATLAS Detector.

Physical review letters·2025
Same author

Evidence for Longitudinally Polarized W Bosons in the Electroweak Production of Same-Sign W Boson Pairs in Association with Two Jets in pp Collisions at sqrt[s]=13  TeV with the ATLAS Detector.

Physical review letters·2025
Same author

Search for Quasiparticle Scattering in the Quark-Gluon Plasma with Jet Splittings in pp and Pb-Pb Collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=5.02  TeV.

Physical review letters·2025
Same author

First Measurement of A=4 Hypernuclei and Antihypernuclei at the LHC.

Physical review letters·2025

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Auditory Perception

Background:

  • Irrelevant sound significantly impairs memory for order, even when participants attempt to ignore it.
  • Previous research has identified factors influencing this irrelevant sound effect, but the special status of speech remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether speech has a unique role in disrupting serial recall memory.
  • To determine if the acoustic properties or the perceived source of a sound are more influential.

Main Methods:

  • Participants performed a serial recall task under conditions with different types of auditory stimuli.
  • Compared the disruptive effects of sine wave speech (perceived as speech or nonspeech) versus natural speech.

Main Results:

Related Experiment Videos

  • Sine wave speech, regardless of perception as speech or nonspeech, caused similar levels of disruption.
  • Natural speech was more disruptive to serial recall than sine wave speech.

    • Conclusions:

    • The acoustic characteristics of a sound, rather than its classification as speech, are primarily responsible for its impact on memory.
    • This suggests that the physical attributes of auditory stimuli are key determinants of memory interference.