Individual differences in the ability to avoid distracting sounds

The present work aims to establish a greater understanding of the cognitive mechanisms involved in avoiding distraction from speech and nonspeech sounds. Although mixed results have been presented by research investigating the hypothesis that individuals with superior working memory abilities are better able to avoid acoustic distraction, we found that working memory correlated with some aspects of performance during distraction when carefully examined. This is consistent with the view that working memory involves resisting interference. In a large sample, we examined two different tasks accompanied by acoustic distraction—serial recall and rapid colour naming—as well as two different measures of working memory (operation span and running span). We show that the previous inability to find relations between working memory and avoidance of distraction may stem from the use of inadequate correlational techniques. Additionally, the level of difficulty of the serial recall task may be an important factor. The results illustrate that commonly used statistical techniques can be misleading and furthermore that the ability to avoid distraction from irrelevant items may not be a unitary construct.