We examined susceptibility to auditory distraction and its association to working-memory capacity (WMC) in children (N=125) using a dichotic listening task. Performance in a dichotic listening task was measured with and without distracting multi-talker babble (MTB). Intrusion errors from the to-be-ignored ear and the overall errors of any type between the two conditions were modeled to explain the role of WMC and the potential moderating effect of MTB, while controlling for age. Susceptibility to auditory distraction when represented by the absolute difference in errors between MTB and no-MTB conditions was not associated with WMC and age. That is, children with greater WMC were no better at ignoring interference from babble than children with low WMC. This suggests that irrelevant sounds have obligatory access to verbal short-term memory and are not effectively suppressed by the attention-controlled WM system. However, when ratio of errors with and without MTB was analyzed, children with high WMC made more errors compared to children with low WMC. Developmental improvements in children’s WMC do not appear to advantage listening in the presence of distracting background noise. Therefore, enhancement of target speech in children’s learning environments is crucial.

我们研究了儿童听觉干扰的易感性及其与儿童工作记忆能力（WMC）的关联（N= 125）使用双耳听觉任务。在有或没有分散多说话者说话声（MTB）的情况下，测量了双耳听力任务的表现。对来自将被忽略的耳朵的入侵错误以及两种情况之间任何类型的总体错误进行了建模，以解释WMC的作用以及MTB的潜在调节作用，同时控制了年龄。当以MTB和无MTB条件之间的绝对误差表示时，听觉分心的易感性与WMC和年龄无关。也就是说，具有较高WMC的儿童比具有较低WMC的儿童更擅长忽略胡言乱语。这表明无关的声音必须强制访问言语短期记忆，并且不受注意力控制的WM系统的有效抑制。然而，在分析有无MTB的错误率时，与低WMC的儿童相比，WMC高的儿童的错误率更高。在分散注意力的背景噪音的情况下，儿童WMC的发展改善似乎并没有使听者受益。因此，提高儿童学习环境中的目标语言至关重要。