High cognitive load abolishes auditory distraction in short-term memory: Implications for working memory-based attentional control and an alternative task-engagement account

• High cognitive load abolishes auditory distraction in short-term memory. • Concurrent articulation eliminates the deviation effect, contrary to working memory–based attentional control predictions. • Load effects on distraction are explained by changes in task engagement rather than working memory capacity limitations. • Findings challenge capacity-depletion accounts of load-dependent distraction. The current study critically examined a common theoretical view in which there exists a distinct working memory (WM) system that not only temporarily stores information but also acts as an attentional controller (the Working Memory—Attentional Control account). A central prediction of this account is that an increase in cognitive load should take up some of the system’s capacity for attentional control and thereby render short-term storage more vulnerable to distraction by task-irrelevant stimuli. The present results directly contradict this prediction: The requirement to engage in an additional concurrent articulation task during short-term serial recall abolished not only the classical changing-state irrelevant sound effect but also attentional capture by an auditory deviant (Experiments 1a and 1b). The deviation effect was also abolished under concurrent articulation in a task involving little if any serial rehearsal (the missing-item task), as indicated independently by the fact this task was immune to a detrimental main effect of concurrent articulation and to a changing-state effect (Experiment 2). We argue that concurrent articulation not only specifically impedes serial rehearsal in the context of serial recall but also imposes a nonspecific cognitive load (regardless of task). However, rather than drain capacity from a distinct WM system, such increased load boosts task engagement which in turn shields performance against forms of distraction that are due to task-disengagement. The task-engagement view may also provide an alternative account of numerous findings that are typically cited in support of the Working Memory—Attentional Control view.