The ability to focus ones attention in different acoustical environments has been thoroughly investigated in the past. However, recent technological advancements have made it possible to perform laboratory experiments in a more realistic manner. In order to investigate close-to-real-life scenarios, a classroom was modeled in virtual reality (VR) and an established paradigm to investigate the auditory selective attention (ASA) switch was translated from an audio-only version into an audiovisual VR setting. The new paradigm was validated with adult participants in a listening experiment, and the results were compared to the previous version. Apart from expected effects such as switching costs and auditory congruency effects, which reflect the robustness of the overall paradigm, a difference in error rates between the audio-only and the VR group was found, suggesting enhanced attention in the new VR setting, which is consistent with recent studies. Overall, the results suggest that the presented VR paradigm can be used and further developed to investigate the voluntary auditory selective attention switch in a close-to-real-life classroom scenario.

Most studies investigating the effects of environmental noise on children’s cognitive performance examine the impact of monaural noise (i.e., same signal to both ears), oversimplifying multiple aspects of binaural hearing (i.e., adequately reproducing interaural differences and spatial information). In the current study, the effects of a realistic classroom-noise scenario presented either monaurally or binaurally on tasks requiring processing of auditory and visually presented information were analyzed in children and adults. In Experiment 1, across age groups, word identification was more impaired by monaural than by binaural classroom noise, whereas listening comprehension (acting out oral instructions) was equally impaired in both noise conditions. In both tasks, children were more affected than adults. Disturbance ratings were unrelated to the actual performance decrements. Experiment 2 revealed detrimental effects of classroom noise on short-term memory (serial recall of words presented pictorially), which did not differ with age or presentation mode (monaural vs. binaural). The present results add to the evidence for detrimental effects of noise on speech perception and cognitive performance, and their interactions with age, using a realistic classroom-noise scenario. Binaural simulations of real-world auditory environments can improve the external validity of studies on the impact of noise on children’s and adults’ learning.

Immediate serial recall of visually presented items is reliably impaired by task-irrelevant speech that the participants are instructed to ignore (“irrelevant speech effect,” ISE). The ISE is stronger with changing speech tokens (words or syllables) when compared to repetitions of single tokens (“changing-state effect,” CSE). These phenomena have been attributed to sound-induced diversions of attention away from the focal task (attention capture account), or to specific interference of obligatory, involuntary sound processing with either the integrity of phonological traces in a phonological short-term store (phonological loop account), or the efficiency of a domain-general rehearsal process employed for serial order retention (changing-state account). Aiming to further explore the role of attention, phonological coding, and serial order retention in the ISE, we analyzed the effects of steady-state and changing-state speech on serial order reconstruction of visually presented verbal and spatial items in children (n = 81) and adults (n = 80). In the verbal task, both age groups performed worse with changing-state speech (sequences of different syllables) when compared with steady-state speech (one syllable repeated) and silence. Children were more impaired than adults by both speech sounds. In the spatial task, no disruptive effect of irrelevant speech was found in either group. These results indicate that irrelevant speech evokes similarity-based interference, and thus pose difficulties for the attention-capture and the changing-state account of the ISE.