It is generally believed that there are two main mechanisms of auditory distraction: attention capture and interference-by-process. Attention capture is said to occur when sounds drag your attention away from what you are attempting to focus on and harm performance as a consequence. Interference-by-process, meanwhile, states that the processing of the sounds can conflict with the processing needed to complete the task of interest. Whether or not the two mechanisms can jointly lead to distraction is unclear at this time. The following dissertation examined the roles of both distraction mechanisms in a cross-modal variant of the Stroop task, in which one names the color of visual items (e.g. color squares) while ignoring auditory color words. I attempted to manipulate the two mechanisms of auditory distraction independently to determine whether 1) both can play a role in distraction simultaneously and 2) whether the mechanisms can be manipulated independently. Experiments 1 and 2 sought to examine the role of attention, while Experiment 3 examined interference-by-process. The results implied that attention, specifically attention capture, appears to have little or no role in the size of the cross-modal effect and that any attention involved is outside the realm of top-down control. Thus, as of this time, there is no clear evidence that both mechanisms of auditory distraction can jointly lead to detriments in performance; however, more work is needed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-05242016-154303 |
| Date | 31 May 2016 |
| Creators | Lutfi-Proctor, Danielle A. |
| Contributors | Elliott, Emily, Beck, Melissa, Hicks, Jason, Coalson, Geoffrey |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-05242016-154303/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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