Auditory distraction refers to cognitive impairment caused by task-irrelevant stimuli (e.g., background speech) that capture attention or interfere with cognitive processes, such as retention order of information in short-term memory. In contrast, interruption refers to a second relevant stimulus that stops an ongoing cognitive activity producing costs after resumption of the primary task. While both phenomena appear similar and are common in everyday environments, it is unclear whether they are based on the same mechanism (attentional capture). This experiment examines auditory distraction and task interruption effects on listening comprehension in a virtual reality (VR) scenario, offering greater ecological validity. In a virtual café, participants listened to a target avatar narrating a topic. In the interruption condition, a waitress avatar repeatedly addressed the participant with a question (“relevant speech”), whereas in the distraction condition, the waitress repeatedly addressed another computer-controlled avatar producing “irrelevant speech”. In the silent condition, participants listened to the target avatar without interruptions or distractions. Following each of the 24 narrations on diverse topics, participants answered four-alternative questions about the spoken content. The narrations were a little over a minute long, and prepared to minimize participants’ reliance on prior knowledge. Inspection of the incoming data suggests that the interruption condition causes the greatest attentional disruption, requiring more effort to refocus on main task. Performance appears to decrease in the order of interruption, distraction, and silent control. An analysis of the results from a total of 80 participants will be presented.