Effects of Noise on Situational Awareness - Essay Example

Student’s name Course code+name Professor’s name University name Date of submission Introduction Situational awareness (SA) is a process of perceiving the environmental elements in regards to space and time, the comprehension of the elements meaning, and the projection of their status with respect to some changed variables (Dalton et al., 2007). In addition to this, Klatsky et al. (2002) explain that situational awareness refers to “the perception of elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning and the projection of their status in the near future” (p.58). This definition has been approached differently by Dalton et al. (2007) who believe it to be the continuous extraction of environmental information along with integration of this information with previous knowledge to form a coherent mental picture in directing further perception and anticipating future need. To achieve a state of situational awareness, the quantitatively and qualitatively determined information is made available to the stakeholders in appropriate and reliable information exchange patterns (Sorathia, 2008). Situational awareness involves what is happening within the environmental vicinity, so as to comprehend vividly how events, information and an individual’s own action impact on objectives and goals both in the current situation and in the near future. As such, there are two issues involved; first, noise plays important role when one wants to achieve a given goal such as communication. Secondly, it is a vital element in work domains where the information flow is critical to decision making across a broad range of dynamic and complex systems. Effects of noise on performance and situation awareness In communication, noise refers to anything that slows down and/or interferes in the process of communication between the audience and speaker. As such it reduces the accuracy and clarity of communication (Harcum etal, 1998). Historically, noise has been proven a nuisance in society with several negative side effects of the unwanted and extraneous sounds. Such effects stems from high volume and chronic exposures. Noise generally affects human health, task performance and lifestyle. As such an individual’s situational awareness can be influenced greatly. Noise is an influential and pervasive source of stress. In this sense, it impairs an individual’s thinking hence situation awareness. Situation awareness is dependent on thinking therefore any factor that clouds ones thinking negates situation awareness. Task involving concentration, cognition and attention need a situational awareness therefore are highly impeded by detrimental background noise. In addition, human vigilant performance is also distracted by music in equal measure. Music stimuli, dictates an individual’s performance in a driving situation. At such an instance the driver is expected to have high level of concentration and situational awareness, but with music stimuli, the driver attention will be distracted hence decline in performance. Noise in highly populated urban areas has been reported to cause sleep disturbances to the populations who live around vicinity such as airports, highways and other noise sources (Sorathia, 2008). These groups of persons are affected psychologically and physiologically, to an extent of impacting on their task performance the following day. According to Boff (2004), participants who had a quiet night completed a simple vigilance test faster in comparison to those who had a relative noisy night. Noise exposure by the participants at night also impaired a simple reaction during a similar task. This shows that during a night of sleep interfered by noise; task performance is slowed and hindered as a result of the effect arising from the poor quality sleep. Consequently, it impairs the vigilant tasks and ones sleep. Noise directly affects concentration, vigilance, cognitive processing, employee concentration and reading skills---factors of situational awareness. All these aspects can only be accomplished on a high level of situation awareness. In a study conducted by Neuhoff (2001), a number of college students showed that noise greatly reduced performance of a task involving identification of repeated numbers. Moreover, noise impeded the performance of an estimation task by increasing the frequency of inaccurate estimation. In all these instances, the overriding factor was the situation awareness. Since estimation is a cognitive process, situational awareness being a process that involves comprehension and projection of environmental elements is equally affected. Further to this, concentration being a process of concentrating especially the fixing of close, undivided attention involves the use of cognitive intuition. In these regards, situation awareness that involves the comprehension of the elements status in the environment plays a critical role in concentration. Aircraft noise for instance, hinders a child ability to learn thus impacting on the comprehension capacity of situation awareness. Learning involves relating and a total comprehension of the environment, therefore any factor that hinders it is directly affecting situation awareness. Chronic noise impaired the child’s recognition memory and reading comprehension (Dalton et al., 2007). Noise is a vital psychological weapon in army training grounds and battlefield. According to the US Army Field Manual (2003) concentration, surprise, audacity and tempo are important characteristics in urban maneuvers. In these instances, it is used to startle and surprise the opposition and to convey authority and speed. Noise interferes with the opposition’s situation awareness by impeding their hearing and comprehension. Apart from the intense noise disorienting and annoying the enemies, it can also make the sounds undetectable by the enemy. Noise can also be used to mask the auditory localization, interfering with the situation awareness making the battleground dangerous and ambiguous. Attention is a key factor in situation awareness, which has been revealed to be negatively affected by noise. Recognition of environmental elements has also been to a lesser extent affected by noise. Harcum et al. (1998), road traffic noise adversely affects semantic memory and recollection of text. As such it interferes with situation awareness that concerns the integration of information with previous knowledge to form a coherent mental picture in directing further perception and anticipating future needs. According to Sorathia (2008), loud industrial noise exposure has increased drastically the duration of reaction during vigilant tasks. Conversely loud sound decreased both complex and simple vigilant tasks to a greater extent. Discussion Communication and psychomotor tasks were less impeded by noise. This interpretation is consistent with the assertion that noise exerts its positive or negative effects through the information it provides to an individual (Broadbent, 1978). Noise can influence the mental model composing of well-defined knowledge from experience developed over a period of time. The available data inherent in operational environments would overwhelm the capability of decision makers to process, attend to and integrate information efficiently and impacting on situation awareness (Sorathia, 2008). The decision making process is guided by the mental cues thus situation awareness. In addition to the method of presentation, the kind of noise was a vital moderating factor. As a general fact, irrelevant speech was found to be more disruptive than mixed speech, non-speech, or music. In fact, in some selected instances music really facilitated situation awareness hence task performance (Klatsky, 2002). However, a score of studies have examined in details the performance effects of music as distracting noise. This omission had been studied by Boff (2004). This stands out as a vital omission, particularly in consideration of the modern proliferation of music devices that have made listening to music a potential distracter in a variety of important performance situations and occupational circumstances. It is therefore important to mark this as crucial issue of societal concern to be addressed by an in-depth future research. Shorter noise durations have proved more enervating to performance than longer noise durations. Such a finding is contested since it contrasts to the argument that short-duration exposure enhances performance because of the long-lasting arousing effects of noise that can temporarily increase information-processing resources (Broadbent, 1978). One reason for the general adverse negative effect of short-duration noise is that at longer durations, people may develop effective coping mechanisms that allow them to adapt to the noise. In contrast, in shorter durations of noise exposure, there could be a limited chance for the adaptation to happen. Moreover, this postulate is deserving of further modeling and experimental evaluation. Conclusion Noise through chronic influence of a major prolonged exposure or through the adverse effects of impulse noise; the problem of noise affects larger populations who have the obligation to accomplish important duties in the presence of noise. Apart from the diffuse effects of noise, it can exert particular influences on different forms of motor and cognitive response. In addition, disregarding the sound type, intensities of loud volume can adversely affect human performance during simulated and simple vigilance tasks. The effects of noise on situation awareness play both a distracting and facilitating role. There is need for further research in this area to differentiate the optimality in background stimulus to facilitate task performance. During frustrating situations such as traffic congestion, music distracts peripheral stimuli. In these circumstances music noise can reduce mild aggression and stress. However the distraction might still impede vigilance performance under these conditions like maneuvering through the traffic. Continuous and acute noise adversely affect comprehension of environmental cues and vigilance thus situation awareness. References Boff, R and Thomas, P (2004), Handbook of human perception and performance: Vol. 2. Cognitive processes and performance pp. 36-45. New York, NY: Wiley. Broadbent, D (1978). Perception and communication. New York, NY: Pergamon Press. Crawford, H and Strapp, M(1994) Effects of vocal and instrumental music on visuo-spatial and verbal performance as moderated by studying preference and personality, Personality and Individual Differences. pp 237–245.New York NY: Springer. Dalton, H. etal (2007), Effects of sound types and volumes on simulated driving, vigilance tasks and heart rate, Occupational Ergonomics pp. 153–168. London: Academic Press. Harcum, R and Monti, M (1998), Cognitions and placebos in behavioral research on ambient noise, Perceptual and Motor Skills. pp 75–99 New York, NY: Wiley. Klatsky, R. etal(2002), Learning directions of objects specified by vision, spatial audition or auditory spatial language. Learning and Memory. Aldershot, United Kingdom: Ashgate. Neuhoff, J (2001). An adaptive bias in the perception of looming auditory motion. Ecological Psychology pp 87-110. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Sorathia,V (2008).Dynamic Information Management Methodology With Situation Awareness Capabality,Gandhinagar. U.S. Department of the Army. Urban operations, Field Manual 3-06. Washington, DC: Department of Defense, 2003. Read More