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Now Hear This: Inattentional Deafness Depends On Task Relatedness, Donald J. Tellinghuisen, Alexander J. Cohen, Natalie J. Cooper

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Mixed results have been found for the impact of auditory information presented during high-perceptual-load visual search tasks, with some studies showing large effects and others indicating inattentional deafness, with such stimuli going largely undetected. In three experiments, we demonstrated that task relatedness is a key factor in whether extraneous auditory stimuli impact high-load visual searches. Experiment 1 addressed a methodological concern (e.g., Lavie Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 75–82, 2005) regarding the timing of the relative onsets and offsets of task-related, to-be-ignored auditory stimuli and visual search arrays in experiments that have shown auditory distractor effects. Robust auditory distractor effects …