The role of habituation in the disruption of recall performance by irrelevant sound

A series of experiments explored the possibility that the pattern of disruption of recall performance by irrelevant sound reflects the process of habituation. Each of three experiments contrasted the action of three auditory conditions: steady state (repeated word sequence) speech, changing state (changing word sequence) speech and quiet. If treatments were changed on a trial‐to‐trial basis, differences between steady state, changing state and quiet were relatively steady over successive trials (Expt 1). A similar pattern emerged even when the auditory conditions were blocked (Expt 2). Prior passive exposure to sound for 20 minutes failed to diminish the impact of sound relative to quiet (Expt 3). The results converge to illustrate that the effects of irrelevant sound are enduring and that they do not diminish with exposure, suggesting that habituation‐based explanations are probably inappropriate.