The irrelevant speech effect (ISE) or irrelevant sound effect is the degradation of
serial recall of a list when sounds, especially speech sounds, are presented. This occurs even if the list items are presented visually. The sounds do not need to be a language the participant understands, or even a real language; human speech sounds are sufficient to produce this effect.
The theory covers speech as well as music or other background sounds. There have been many studies on this theory and it has been consistently proven that unrelated or irrelevant background sounds inhibits one's ability to perform well at serial recall.
[Perham, N., Vizard, J. (July 28, 2010). Can preference for background music mediate the irrelevant sound effect? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2010; DOI: 10.1002/acp.1731. Retrieved 2022-06-04.]
Interference hypothesis
It is possible that the visual stimuli (the list of items) is held in
working memory
Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold information temporarily. It is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and behavior. Working memory is often used synonymously with short-term memory, ...
as a
phonological code. The phonological loop is composed of the articulatory rehearsal loop and the phonological store.
If that is the case, the irrelevant speech could interfere with the articulatory rehearsal process, degrading the information in the phonological store. This would result in degraded performance on trials where irrelevant speech is presented. However, the effect should be greater for words rehearsed longer (i.e., presented earlier in the series) since they are rehearsed more often, hence having more opportunity for degradation.
References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Irrelevant Speech Effect
Memory