Comment on "When softer sounds are more distracting: Task-irrelevant whispered speech causes disruption of serial recall" [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 156, 3632-3648 (2024)]

I liked reading Florian Kattner and colleagues’ article on auditory distraction, which appears to reveal a disruptive advantage of a to-be-ignored whisper beyond comparable phonated speech. However, this small-to-medium sized “whisper effect” does not replicate when this speech is in a language that is neither familiar nor understood. In collaboration with John Marsh, there is an investigation by K. C. McCulloch from 2022. For readers to assess if this whisper effect replicates, this prior data warrant publication. Whether or not that whisper effect replicates, and how, constrains the implications for noise management and workplace redesigns.