The involuntary capture of attention by novel sounds : is it really about novelty?

• Unexpected events often distract us. In the laboratory, novel auditory stimuli have been shown to capture attention away from a focal visual task and yield specific electrophysiological responses as well as a behavioral cost to performance. This phenomenon is thought to follow ineluctably from the sound's low probability of occurrence or, put more simply, its unexpected occurrence. Our study challenges this view and argues that past research failed to identify the informational value of sound as a mediator of novelty distraction. We report an experiment showing that (1) novelty distraction is only observed when the sound announces the occurrence and timing of an upcoming visual target (as is the case in all past research); (2) that no such distraction is observed for deviant sounds conveying no such information; and that (3) deviant sounds can actually facilitate performance when these, but not the standards, convey information. We conclude that novelty distraction is observed in the presence of novel sounds but only when the cognitive system can take advantage of the auditory distracters to optimize performance.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Maskinteknik -- Produktionsteknik, arbetsvetenskap och ergonomi (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Mechanical Engineering -- Production Engineering, Human Work Science and Ergonomics (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Engineering Psychology

Teknisk psykologi

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

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