Cat-astrophic update: What makes an interrupter more disruptive?

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Auditory Neuroscience

Background:

• Selective attention is crucial for focusing on auditory information.
• Salient interruptions can impair recall accuracy, known as the interruption effect.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate factors influencing the interruption effect magnitude.
• Examine novelty, working memory load, and interrupter predictability in auditory attention.

Main Methods:

• Listeners performed an auditory spatial attention task, distinguishing target and distractor streams.
• Unpredictable auditory interruptions were introduced at varying points.
• Recall accuracy of target syllables was measured under different conditions.

Main Results:

• Interrupter novelty did not affect the interruption effect.
• Increased working memory load (target sequence length) amplified the interruption effect.
• Unpredictable interrupters caused greater disruption than predictable ones.

Conclusions:

• Auditory interruptions significantly impact top-down attention and working memory maintenance.
• Interrupter predictability and working memory load are key factors in attentional disruption.