I Don’t Want to Hear It : Cognitive Control Strategies in Response to Task-Irrelevant Sound

Sammanfattning: An adequate capacity for cognitive control, the ability to maintain goal-directed behavior despite conflicting environmental demands, is a requirement for effective functioning. Whether it be the capacity to delay gratification or to effectively regulate emotions, various types of cognitive control allow us to function effectively despite the enormous complexity encountered in everyday life. Yet, some forms of cognitive control, such as thought suppression, have been shown to have delayed and potentially adverse consequences. Previous research has largely neglected to study cognitive control in the auditory domain, yet task-irrelevant and potentially distracting sounds are omnipresent, making this a highly interesting area of research.In the current thesis, I present findings from four experimental studies with an overall aim to investigate the use, effectiveness, and delayed consequences of cognitive control in the auditory domain.  In Study II and Study IV, the aim was to investigate the use of four common emotion regulation strategies in response to task-irrelevant, potentially distracting sound. Measures of emotional responding were also included to determine whether the use and effectiveness of these strategies was related to subjective emotion. In Study II, participants received either positive or negative information about an inherently neutral sound in an attempt to manipulate their emotional experience of the sound. In contrast, sounds used in Study IV were inherently negative or neutral. Results from both studies showed that all four of the surveyed emotion regulation strategies were used to some degree, and that participants reported use of multiple regulatory strategies. Results also suggest that subjective ratings of negative emotion in response to the sound were related to greater use of mental suppression, in line with findings from other sensory domains.  In Study I and Study III, we specifically investigated the delayed consequences of mental suppression. In line with previous research from other sensory modalities, results from the two experiments reported in Study I suggest that mentally suppressing awareness of a task-irrelevant sound results in delayed consequences. However, the nature of these consequences varied between experiments. This may be due to the use of different sound stimuli in the two experiments, where sounds from the first experiment were emotionally neutral and unintrusive, while sounds from the second were inherently aversive. In Study III, the aim was to replicate and expand on the findings from Study I, and specifically test for delayed consequences on perceptual responding. Mental suppression, conceptualized as an experiential avoidance strategy, was compared to an approach focused strategy, with the hypothesis that mental suppression would result in hypervigilance toward previously suppressed stimuli. Results from the two experiments reported in Study III did not provide support for this hypothesis.  In conclusion, results from the studies presented in the current thesis suggest that people regularly use cognitive control strategies in response to task-irrelevant sound, and that the use of these strategies may be related to subjective emotional experiences of the sound. Additionally, attempting to mentally suppress awareness of a sound may result in delayed consequences, but the circumstance under which these delayed consequences can be demonstrated are not yet understood. The included studies provide initial indications that developing adaptive strategies of coping with distracting sound can reduce the risk of long-term maladaptive consequences.