Attention and short-term memory during occupational noise exposure considering task difficulty

By R. Golmohammadi, E. Darvishi, J. Faradmal, J. Poorolajal, M. Aliabadi. 2020

61 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Background Noise has been found as a distraction for cognitive performance in occupational settings. The noise effect on cognitive function depends on the type of noise and task. This study aimed to investigate the attention and short-term memory during exposure to five noise conditions: quiet condition, closed offices, open-plan offices, control rooms, and industrial workplaces, considering task difficulty. Methods Noise levels were measured and determined during a normal workweek. An experiment was designed, and thirty-one student’s male was asked to perform two following test: N-Back (to evaluate memory at three levels), and Go/No-Go (to evaluate attention) during each condition. Because mental workload can influence results, the mental workload was evaluated in each condition using to NASA TLX. A 2-LME model was developed to moderate confounding’s factors in correlation analysis of noise against performance. Results The LAeq in quiet condition (QC) was: 54 ± 0.3 dB(A), closed offices (CO): 64 ± 0.4 dB(A), open-plan offices (OPO): 68 ± 0.8 dB(A), control rooms (CR):73 ± 0.3 dB(A), and industrial workplace (IW): 80 ± 0.1 dB(A). In 1-Back, the average commission errors increased under conditions with higher noise levels. In 2-Back, the average commission errors were almost the same for all conditions except for CR. The average omission errors were also higher in OPO condition than other conditions. In 3-Back, the average of omission errors was almost the same for QC and CO conditions. The condition CO had the highest average commission errors. However, there was a significant difference between the commission errors at both 1 and 3-Back tests and the omission errors only at the 2-Back test. The average of the reaction time was higher in condition with the lower noise level in both tests. There was no significant difference between the parameters in the Go/No-Go except for reaction time. MWL perceptions increased under more adverse noise conditions. Conclusion Simple tasks are more affected by noise levels, while difficult tasks are affected by the type of noise. The noise-induced impaired cognitive function is mainly due to omission errors in medium tasks, and commission errors in both simple and difficult tasks. The distraction of attention in office jobs is higher than industrial ones.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology, Speech and Hearing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f014011ff0e27cc3c7090c45402e30cb2311d9df