Auditory distraction from low-intensity noise: a review of the consequences for learning and workplace environments

The 'irrelevant sound effect' in short-term memory is commonly believed to entail a number of direct consequences for cognitive performance in the office and other workplaces (e.g. S. P. Banbury, S. Tremblay, W. J. Macken, & D. M. Jones, 2001). It may also help to identify what types of sound are most suitable as auditory warning signals. However, the conclusions drawn are based primarily upon evidence from a single task (serial recall) and a single population (young adults). This evidence is reconsidered from the standpoint of different worker populations confronted with common workplace tasks and auditory environments. Recommendations are put forward for factors to be considered when assessing the impact of auditory distraction in the workplace. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Analyzing the meaning of background speech is obligatory, distraction by meaning is not

The effects of background English and Welsh speech on memory for visually-presented English words were contrasted amongst monolingual English speakers and bilingual Welsh-English speakers. Equivalent disruption to the English language task was observed amongst Welsh-speaking bilinguals from both English and Welsh speech, but English-speaking monolinguals displayed less disruption from the Welsh speech. An effect of the meaning of the background speech was therefore apparent amongst bilinguals even when the focal memory task was presented in a different language from the distracting speech. A second experiment tested only English-speaking monolinguals, using English as background speech, but varied the demands of the focal task. Participants were asked either to count the number of vowels in words visually presented for future recall, or to rate them for pleasantness, before subsequently being asked to recall the words. Greater disruption to recall was observed from meaningful background speech when participants initially rated the words for pleasantness than when they initially counted the vowels within the words. These results show that background speech is automatically analyzed for meaning, but whether the meaning of the background speech causes distraction is critically dependent upon the nature of the focal task. The data underscore the need to consider not only the nature of office noise, but also the demands and content of the work task when assessing the effects of office noise on work performance.

Auditory distraction eliminates retrieval induced forgetting: implications for the processing of unattended sound

The Retrieval-Induced Forgetting (RIF) paradigm includes three phases: (a) study/encoding of category exemplars, (b) practicing retrieval of a sub-set of those category exemplars, and (c) recall of all exemplars. At the final recall phase, recall of items that belong to the same categories as those items that undergo retrieval-practice, but that do not undergo retrieval-practice, is impaired. The received view is that this is because retrieval of target category-exemplars (e.g., ‘Tiger’ in the category Four-legged animal) requires inhibition of non-target category-exemplars (e.g., ‘Dog’ and ‘Lion’) that compete for retrieval. Here, we used the RIF paradigm to investigate whether ignoring auditory items during the retrieval-practice phase modulates the inhibitory process. In two experiments, RIF was present when retrieval-practice was conducted in quiet and when conducted in the presence of spoken words that belonged to a category other than that of the items that were targets for retrieval-practice. In contrast, RIF was abolished when words that either were identical to the retrieval-practice words or were only semantically related to the retrieval-practice words were presented as background speech. The results suggest that the act of ignoring speech can reduce inhibition of the non-practiced category-exemplars, thereby eliminating RIF, but only when the spoken words are competitors for retrieval (i.e., belong to the same semantic category as the to-be-retrieved items).

Contrasting effects of changing rhythm and content on auditory distraction in immediate memory

Across five experiments, the temporal regularity and content of an irrelevant speech stream were varied and their effects on a serial recall task examined. Variations of the content, but not the rhythm, of the irrelevant speech stimuli reliably disrupted serial recall performance in all experiments. Bayesian analyses supported the null hypothesis over the hypothesis that irregular rhythms would disrupt memory to a greater extent than regular rhythms. Pooling the data in a combined analysis revealed that regular presentation of the irrelevant speech was significantly more disruptive to serial recall than irregular presentation. These results are consistent with the idea that auditory distraction is sensitive to both intra-item and inter-item relations and challenge an orienting-based account of auditory distraction.

Erroneous and veridical recall are not two sides of the same coin: evidence from semantic distraction in free recall

Two experiments examined the extent to which erroneous recall blocks veridical recall using, as a vehicle for study, the disruptive impact of distractors that are semantically similar to a list of words presented for free recall. Instructing participants to avoid erroneous recall of to-be-ignored spoken distractors attenuated their recall but this did not influence the disruptive effect of those distractors on veridical recall (Experiment 1). Using an externalised output-editing procedure—whereby participants recalled all items that came to mind and identified those that were erroneous—the usual between-sequence semantic similarity effect on erroneous and veridical recall was replicated but the relationship between the rate of erroneous and veridical recall was weak (Experiment 2). The results suggest that forgetting is not due to veridical recall being blocked by similar events.

Another Proof of the Preceding Theory

Another Proof of the Preceding Theory was produced as part of a residency run by Artists in Archeology in conjunction with the Stonehenge Riverside project. The film explores the relationship between science, work and ritual, imagining archaeology as a future cult. As two robed disciples stray off from the dig, they are drawn to the drone of the stones and proceed to play the henge like a gigantic Theremin. Just as a Theremin is played with the hand interfering in an electric circuit and producing sound without contact, so the stones respond to the choreographed bodily proximity. Finally, one of the two continues alone to the avenue at Avebury, where the magnetic pull of the stones reaches its climax. Shot on VHS, the film features a score by Zuzushi Monkey, with percussion and theremin sounds mirroring the action. The performers are mostly artists and archeologists from the art and archaeology teams. The archeologists were encouraged to perform their normal work in the robes, in an attempt to explore the meeting points of science and ritual and interrogate our relationship to an ultimately unknowable prehistoric past where activities we do not understand are relegated to the realm of religion. Stonehenge has unique acoustic properties, it’s large sarsen stones are finely worked on the inside, left rough on the outside, intensifying sound waves within the inner horseshoe, but since their real use, having been built over centuries, remains ambiguous, the film proposes that our attempts to decode them may themselves become encoded in their cumulative meaning for future researchers.

The distributed work of local action: interaction amongst virtually collocated research teams

Existing research on synchronous remote working in CSCW has highlighted the troubles that can arise because actions at one site are (partially) unavailable to remote colleagues. Such ‘local action’ is routinely characterised as a nuisance, a distraction, subordinate and the like. This paper explores interconnections between ‘local action’ and ‘distributed work’ in the case of a research team virtually collocated through ‘MiMeG’. MiMeG is an e-Social Science tool that facilitates ‘distributed data sessions’ in which social scientists are able to remotely collaborate on the real-time analysis of video data. The data are visible and controllable in a shared workspace and participants are additionally connected via audio conferencing. The findings reveal that whilst the (partial) unavailability of local action is at times problematic, it is also used as a resource for coordinating work. The paper considers how local action is interactionally managed in distributed data sessions and concludes by outlining implications of the analysis for the design and study of technologies to support group-to-group collaboration.

Sources of multi-decadal variability in Arctic sea ice extent

The observed dramatic decrease in September sea ice extent (SIE) has been widely discussed in the scientific literature. Though there is qualitative agreement between observations and ensemble members of the Third Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3), it is concerning that the observed trend (1979–2010) is not captured by any ensemble member. The potential sources of this discrepancy include: observational uncertainty, physical model limitations and vigorous natural climate variability. The latter has received less attention and is difficult to assess using the relatively short observational sea ice records. In this study multi-centennial pre-industrial control simulations with five CMIP3 climate models are used to investigate the role that the Arctic oscillation (AO), the Atlantic multi-decadal oscillation (AMO) and the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) play in decadal sea ice variability. Further, we use the models to determine the impact that these sources of variability have had on SIE over both the era of satellite observation (1979–2010) and an extended observational record (1953–2010). There is little evidence of a relationship between the AO and SIE in the models. However, we find that both the AMO and AMOC indices are significantly correlated with SIE in all the models considered. Using sensitivity statistics derived from the models, assuming a linear relationship, we attribute 0.5–3.1%/decade of the 10.1%/decade decline in September SIE (1979–2010) to AMO driven variability.

Memory as discrimination: what distraction reveals

Recalling information involves the process of discriminating between relevant and irrelevant information stored in memory. Not infrequently, the relevant information needs to be selected from amongst a series of related possibilities. This is likely to be particularly problematic when the irrelevant possibilities are not only temporally or contextually appropriate but also overlap semantically with the target or targets. Here, we investigate the extent to which purely perceptual features which discriminate between irrelevant and target material can be used to overcome the negative impact of contextual and semantic relatedness. Adopting a distraction paradigm, it is demonstrated that when distracters are interleaved with targets presented either visually (Experiment 1) or auditorily (Experiment 2), a within-modality semantic distraction effect occurs; semantically-related distracters impact upon recall more than unrelated distracters. In the semantically-related condition, the number of intrusions in recall is reduced whilst the number of correctly recalled targets is simultaneously increased by the presence of perceptual cues to relevance (color features in Experiment 1 or speaker’s gender in Experiment 2). However, as demonstrated in Experiment 3, even presenting semantically-related distracters in a language and a sensory modality (spoken Welsh) distinct from that of the targets (visual English) is insufficient to eliminate false recalls completely, or to restore correct recall to levels seen with unrelated distracters . Together, the study shows how semantic and non-semantic discriminability shape patterns of both erroneous and correct recall.

3D cloud reconstructions: evaluation of scanning radar scan strategy with a view to surface shortwave radiation closure

The ability of six scanning cloud radar scan strategies to reconstruct cumulus cloud fields for radiation study is assessed. Utilizing snapshots of clean and polluted cloud fields from large eddy simulations, an analysis is undertaken of error in both the liquid water path and monochromatic downwelling surface irradiance at 870 nm of the reconstructed cloud fields. Error introduced by radar sensitivity, choice of radar scan strategy, retrieval of liquid water content (LWC), and reconstruction scheme is explored. Given an in␣nitely sensitive radar and perfect LWC retrieval, domain average surface irradiance biases are typically less than 3 W m␣2 ␣m␣1, corresponding to 5–10% of the cloud radiative effect (CRE). However, when using a realistic radar sensitivity of ␣37.5 dBZ at 1 km, optically thin areas and edges of clouds are dif␣cult to detect due to their low radar re-ectivity; in clean conditions, overestimates are of order 10 W m␣2 ␣m␣1 (~20% of the CRE), but in polluted conditions, where the droplets are smaller, this increases to 10–26 W m␣2 ␣m␣1 (~40–100% of the CRE). Drizzle drops are also problematic; if treated as cloud droplets, reconstructions are poor, leading to large underestimates of 20–46 W m␣2 ␣m␣1 in domain average surface irradiance (~40–80% of the CRE). Nevertheless, a synergistic retrieval approach combining the detailed cloud structure obtained from scanning radar with the droplet-size information and location of cloud base gained from other instruments would potentially make accurate solar radiative transfer calculations in broken cloud possible for the first time.

Friendly amendment: a commentary on Doyle and Ford's proposed re-definition of 'mental model'

Some amendments are proposed to a recent redefinition of the mental model concept in system dynamics. First, externalised, or articulated mental models should not be called cognitive maps; this term has a well established, alternative meaning. Second, there can be mental models of entities not yet existing beyond an individual's mind; the modelling of planned or desired systems is possible and recommended. Third, saying that mental models maintain social systems connects with some exciting research opportunities for system dynamics; however, it is probably an accidental distraction from the intended meaning of the redefinition. These minor criticisms apart, the new definition of mental model of a dynamic system is welcomed as a useful contribution to both research and practice.

Texture, realism, performance: exploring the intersection of transtexts and the contemporary sitcom

Contemporary US sitcom is at an interesting crossroads: it has received an increasing amount of scholarly attention (e.g. Mills 2009; Butler 2010; Newman and Levine 2012; Vermeulen and Whitfield 2013), which largely understands it as shifting towards the aesthetically and narratively complex. At the same time, in the post-broadcasting era, US networks are particularly struggling for their audience share. With the days of blockbuster successes like Must See TV’s Friends (NBC 1994-2004) a distant dream, recent US sitcoms are instead turning towards smaller, engaged audiences. Here, a cult sensibility of intertextual in-jokes, temporal and narrational experimentation (e.g. flashbacks and alternate realities) and self-reflexive performance styles have marked shows including Community (NBC 2009-2015), How I Met Your Mother (CBS 2005-2014), New Girl (Fox 2011-present) and 30 Rock (NBC 2006-2013). However, not much critical attention has so far been paid to how these developments in textual sensibility in contemporary US sitcom may be influenced by, and influencing, the use of transmedia storytelling practices, an increasingly significant industrial concern and rising scholarly field of enquiry (e.g. Jenkins 2006; Mittell 2015; Richards 2010; Scott 2010; Jenkins, Ford and Green 2013). This chapter investigates this mutual influence between sitcom and transmedia by taking as its case studies two network shows that encourage invested viewership through their use of transtexts, namely How I Met Your Mother (hereafter HIMHM) and New Girl (hereafter NG). As such, it will pay particular attention to the most transtextually visible character/actor from each show: HIMYM’s Barney Stinson, played by Neil Patrick Harris, and NG’s Schmidt, played by Max Greenfield. This chapter argues that these sitcoms do not simply have their particular textual sensibility and also (happen to) engage with transmedia practices, but that the two are mutually informing and defining. This chapter explores the relationships and interplay between sitcom aesthetics, narratives and transmedia storytelling (or industrial transtexts), focusing on the use of multiple delivery channels in order to disperse “integral elements of a fiction” (Jenkins, 2006 95-6), by official entities such as the broadcasting channels. The chapter pays due attention to the specific production contexts of both shows and how these inform their approaches to transtexts. This chapter’s conceptual framework will be particularly concerned with how issues of texture, the reality envelope and accepted imaginative realism, as well as performance and the actor’s input inform and illuminate contemporary sitcoms and transtexts, and will be the first scholarly research to do so. It will seek out points of connections between two (thus far) separate strands of scholarship and will move discussions on transtexts beyond the usual genre studied (i.e. science-fiction and fantasy), as well as make a contribution to the growing scholarship on contemporary sitcom by approaching it from a new critical angle. On the basis that transmedia scholarship stands to benefit from widening its customary genre choice (i.e. telefantasy) for its case studies and from making more use of in-depth close analysis in its engagement with transtexts, the chapter argues that notions of texture, accepted imaginative realism and the reality envelope, as well as performance and the actor’s input deserve to be paid more attention to within transtext-related scholarship.