Preregistered Replication of the Auditory Deviant Effect: A Robust Benchmark Finding

Abstract

Short-term memory of visually presented lists of items is disrupted by auditory distraction. The auditory deviant effect refers to the finding that a sequence in which a single auditory event deviates from all other auditory objects disrupts serial recall more than a sequence without such a deviant. The changing-state effect refers to the finding that auditory changing-state sequences with changes from one auditory distractor item to the next disrupt the immediate serial recall of verbal items more than steady-state sequences consisting of distractor repetitions. One purpose of the present study is to perform a preregistered replication of the auditory deviant effect as well as (for the purpose of comparison) the changing-state effect and to provide reference data sets for the auditory deviant effect and the changing-state effect in the benchmarks repository with a large sample of participants and trials. Both effects were robustly obtained over the course of two sessions in which participants were tested. We also explored the relationship between auditory distraction and personality, and found auditory distraction to be unrelated to extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism.

Keywords

• Working memory
• Short-term memory
• Attention