Auditory Distraction of Vocal-Motor Behaviour by Different Components of Song: Testing an Interference-by-Process Account

Abstract

The process-oriented account of auditory distraction suggests that task-disruption is a consequence of the joint action of task- and sound-related processes. Here, four experiments put this view to the test by examining the extent to which to-be-ignored melodies (with or without lyrics) influence vocal-motor processing. Using song retrieval tasks (i.e., reproduction of melodies or lyrics from long-term memory), the results revealed a pattern of disruption that was consistent with an interference-by-process view: disruption depended jointly on the nature of the vocal-motor retrieval (e.g., melody retrieval via humming vs. spoken lyrics) and the characteristics of the sound (whether it contained lyrics and was familiar to the participants). Furthermore, the sound properties, influential in disrupting song reproduction, were not influential for disrupting visual-verbal short-term memory—a task that is arguably underpinned by non-semantic vocal-motor planning processes. Generally, these results cohere better with the process-oriented view, in comparison with competing accounts (e.g., interference-by-content).