The irrelevant speech effect refers to the degradation of serial recall when speech sounds are presented, even if the list items are presented visually. The sounds need not be a language the participant understands, nor even a real language - human speech sounds are sufficient to produce this effect.
Read more about Irrelevant Speech Effect: Interference Hypothesis
Famous quotes containing the words irrelevant, speech and/or effect:
“A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature, a piece of impertinent correspondency, an odious approximation, a haunting conscience, a preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noon-tide of our prosperity.... He is known by his knock.”
—Charles Lamb (1775–1834)
“As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most excellent speech finally falls into Silence. Silence is audible to all men, at all times, and in all places. She is when we hear inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly. Creation has not displaced her, but is her visible framework and foil. All sounds are her servants, and purveyors, proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought after.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“That when that knot’s untied that made us one,
I may seem thine, who in effect am none.
And if I see not half my dayes that’s due,
What nature would, God grant to yours and you;”
—Anne Bradstreet (c. 1612–1672)