Irrelevant speech and serial recall: implications for theories of attention and working memory

Irrelevant speech markedly impairs serial recall of visually presented lists, even though the person is asked to ignore the speech. In this, the first major review of the phenomenon, we conclude that (i) the effect occurs in memory rather than at encoding; (ii) within memory, the disruption occurs as a result of a confluence of information at the phonological rather than at the articulatory stage of coding; (iii) speech does not have privileged access to memory, since its disruptive effects may be attenuated by habituation; and (iv) disruption occurs as a result of the changing state of the auditory channel, not as had previously been thought the phonological similarity of visual and auditory streams, and is particularly sensitive to pitch changes in both speech and non-speech stimuli. These conclusions are discussed in the light of two complementary theoretical constructs: a cascading filter system responsible for the access of speech to memory and a system of coding within memory sensitive to changing state of the stream responsible for disruption of serial order. Recommendations are made also for empirical work to refine these constructs.