On the Irrelevance of Semantic Information for the “Irrelevant Speech” Effect

Two experiments that tested whether semantic similarity between visually presented targets and auditorily presented distractors has an effect on serial recall of the visual targets are reported. In Experiment 1, we found no difference in the recall of two-digit numbers when distractors were either numbers or words and non-words that were designed to be phonologically similar to the targets. In Experiment 2 the “semantic distance” between targets and distractors had no effect on serial recall. Taken together, these experiments conceptually replicate and extend earlier results, and they establish constraints for models of the effect of unattended acoustic information on serial recall.