In contrast to background white noise, the detrimental effects of background speech on verbal working memory (WM) were often explained by speech interference in the same verbal modality. Yet, those results were confounded with potential differences between arousal levels induced by speech and white noise. To address the role of arousal, in the present study, we minimized the verbal interference by using a visual WM task to test the influence of background speech or white noise. Electrodermal activity (EDA) was recorded simultaneously to indicate participants' arousal levels. Results showed that both background speech and white noise significantly improved visual WM performance, which further correlated with individuals' changes of EDA signals. Taken together, our results suggest that background sounds of both speech and white noise facilitate visual WM by raising the arousal level.

中文翻译：

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背景白噪声和语音促进视觉工作记忆

与背景白噪声相比，背景语音对言语工作记忆 (WM) 的不利影响通常可以通过相同言语方式中的言语干扰来解释。然而，这些结果与语音和白噪声引起的唤醒水平之间的潜在差异相混淆。为了解决唤醒的作用，在本研究中，我们通过使用视觉 WM 任务来测试背景语音或白噪声的影响，从而最大限度地减少语言干扰。同时记录皮肤电活动 (EDA) 以指示参与者的觉醒水平。结果表明，背景语音和白噪声都显着提高了视觉 WM 性能，这进一步与个体 EDA 信号的变化相关。综合起来，