Working memory capacity is equally unrelated to auditory distraction by changing-state and deviant sounds

- We tested if WMC is differentially related to changing-state and deviation effect.
- WMC was neither correlated with the deviation nor with the changing-state effect.
- No difference was found between these correlations.
- There is no dissociation between deviation and changing-state effect.
- The results support a unitary over a the duplex-mechanism account of auditory distraction.

The duplex-mechanism account states that there are two fundamentally different types of auditory distraction. The disruption by a sequence of changing auditory distractors (the changing-state effect) is attributed to the obligatory processing of the to-be-ignored information, which automatically interferes with short-term memory. The disruption by a sequence with a single deviant auditory distractor (the deviation effect), in contrast, is attributed to attentional capture. This account predicts that working memory capacity (WMC) is differentially related to the changing-state effect and to the deviation effect: The changing-state effect is assumed to be immune to cognitive control and, thus, to be unrelated to WMC. The deviation effect, in contrast, is assumed to be open to cognitive control and, thus, to be negatively related to WMC. Despite several methodological improvements over previous studies (large sample sizes, a composite measure of WMC, and a direct statistical comparison of the correlations), there was no evidence of a dissociation between the changing-state effect and the deviation effect. WMC was unrelated both to the size of the changing-state effect and to the size of the deviation effect, irrespective of whether simple stimuli (letters, Experiments 1 and 3) or complex stimuli (words and sentences, Experiment 2) were used as auditory distractors. Furthermore, a cross-experimental analysis with a total sample of N = 601 participants disconfirmed the idea that both types of auditory distraction show a differential relationship with WMC. Implications for models of auditory distraction are discussed.