Effect of distraction on reading versus listening

Levy (1977) reported a series of experiments in which a distracting task (counting aloud) interfered more with reading than with listening. The results were interpreted as evidence of the importance of phonological recoding during reading. In a similar experiment we varied the nature of the distracting task, using one task related to speech (counting aloud) and one task not related to speech (manual response to a threshold shock). Both distracting tasks led to similar results, namely, more interference with reading than listening. On the basis of our results and a consideration of related literature, we ascribe the selective interference effect to the relative difficulty of reading over listening rather than to the importance of speech recoding in reading.