Attention capture by own name decreases with speech compression

TL;DR

A listener's own name can capture attention even in compressed speech, but the effect weakens with higher compression levels.

Contribution

The study shows that own-name attention capture decreases with speech compression, supporting the duplex-mechanism account of auditory distraction.

Findings

Participants were slower at word categorization when hearing their own name compared to other names.

Attention capture by own name was strongest with slight compression and weakest with intense compression.

Time-compressed speech still captures attention, but the effect depends on compression level.

Abstract

Auditory stimuli that are relevant to a listener have the potential to capture focal attention even when unattended, the listener’s own name being a particularly effective stimulus. We report two experiments to test the attention-capturing potential of the listener’s own name in normal speech and time-compressed speech. In Experiment 1, 39 participants were tested with a visual word categorization task with uncompressed spoken names as background auditory distractors. Participants’ word categorization performance was slower when hearing their own name rather than other names, and in a final test, they were faster at detecting their own name than other names. Experiment 2 used the same task paradigm, but the auditory distractors were time-compressed names. Three compression levels were tested with 25 participants in each condition. Participants’ word categorization performance was again slower when hearing their own name than when hearing other names; the slowing was strongest with slight compression and weakest with intense compression. Personally relevant time-compressed speech has the potential to capture attention, but the degree of capture depends on the level of compression. Attention capture by time-compressed speech has practical significance and provides partial evidence for the duplex-mechanism account of auditory distraction.

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