A shield against distraction |
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Affiliation: | 1. Department of Building, Energy and Environmental Engineering, University of Gävle, Gävle, Sweden;2. School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK;3. Linnaeus Centre HEAD, Swedish Institute for Disability Research, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden |
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Abstract: | In this paper, we apply the basic idea of a trade-off between the level of concentration and distractibility to test whether a manipulation of task difficulty can shield against distraction. Participants read, either in quiet or with a speech noise background, texts that were displayed either in an easy-to-read or a hard-to-read font. Background speech impaired prose recall, but only when the text was displayed in the easy-to-read font. Most importantly, recall was better in the background speech condition for hard-to-read than for easy-to-read texts. Moreover, individual differences in working memory capacity were related to the magnitude of disruption, but only in the easy-to-read condition. Making a task more difficult can sometimes facilitate selective attention in noisy work environments by promoting focal-task engagement. |
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Keywords: | Noise Task difficulty Memory Distraction Selective attention Working memory capacity |
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