ABSTRACT
Two experiments were conducted to examine whether the disruptive effects of extraneous speech observed in the laboratory can be found with aviation-related tasks. The first experiment examined whether background speech can disrupt performance on an auditory/verbal task, which required participants to recall navigation information. The second experiment examined whether background speech can disrupt performance on a visuo/spatial task, which required participants to recall a target’s track history on a radar display. The results indicated that the presence of background speech disrupts performance on both these tasks, despite participants trying to ignore it. The results are interpreted in the light of the theories pertaining to the ‘irrelevant sound effect’.
