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Auditory Narrative Lingering Under Competing Speech

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 7, 2026, 3:00 – 5:00 pm PST, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Priya Rakesh Pandey^1,2 (ppandey@research.baycrest.org), Ryan Panela^1,2, Björn Herrmann^1,2; ¹Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Academy for Research and Education, ²Department of Psychology, University of Toronto

Speech we hear can linger in our thoughts after listening, a phenomenon known as psychological momentum. Conversational speech shares this immersive quality but often occurs amidst competing talkers, requiring attentional resources to resolve target speech from background speech. The extent to which speech lingers in people’s minds under such conditions and whether residuals of competing speech also linger, is unknown. The current study examined whether varying levels of competing speech influence narrative lingering. Twenty-four younger adults (18–35 years) completed three blocks in which they listened to two stories simultaneously, attending to one and ignoring the other. Stories were presented at +2 dB and –6 dB Target-to-Masker Ratios (TMRs), with a speech-in-quiet condition as baseline. Participants completed a free association task before and after listening, verbalizing any words that came to mind. Electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking were recorded to index attention and listening effort. Analyses compared the degree of semantic similarity between participants’ pre- and post-listening words with the direct and thematic words extracted from both stories. Compared to pre-listening words, post-listening words were more similar to attended-story direct and theme words, indicative of narrative lingering; however, this effect was not moderated by TMR, suggesting that lingering persists even under challenging listening conditions. No lingering was observed for ignored stories. EEG and eye-tracking analyses will reveal the attentional mechanisms underlying narrative lingering. The current findings suggest that selective attention during speech-in-speech listening promotes narrative lingering, but varying the strength of competing speech does not differentially affect this process.

Topic Area: ATTENTION: Auditory