The Effects of Noise on Cognitive Ability and Performance - Lab Report Example

? Psychology research report The effects of noise on cognitive ability /performance This research study examined the effects of noise on the academic performance and cognitive ability of college students. By using a sample of 30 randomly sampled student participants and dividing them into three groups, with each group being subjected to acute and chronic noise, the study discovered that the two types of noise showed limited differences on their impact on cognitive ability and performance of college students. Introduction The study of the impact of noise on cognitive and academic performance is a psychological area that is fairly covered. Many research studies have been conducted to determine the relative impacts of noise attention, learning, reading and memory. A majority of these research studies have solely focused on children attending school and at-risk demographics such as old people (Hygge, 2003). Minimal research has been conducted on different age groups with similar sets of cognitive abilities, and the research studies are exploratory, making use of acute noise exposure in a laboratory setting. Therefore it is evident that there is a necessity to compare the impacts of chronic and acute noise on cognitive ability and academic performance of students aged between the ages of eighteen and twenty five years in college (Smith-Jackson& Klein, 2009). However, there are some instances where longitudinal studies on the impacts of noise show that noise negatively affects some of the cognitive abilities, research with experimental acute noise exposure, which offers a chance for comparison of the effects of chronic and acute noise on cognitive ability and performance. A vital issue is the definition of the term noise. The common definition of noise is that it is an unwanted sound. This definition is devoid of specific constraints such as the needed intensity of sound. In addition to this, sound that is noise to one individual may not be noise to another individual. Therefore, it is imperative for any research work on the impacts of noise to consider various sounds when studying this topic (Chou, 2007). The impacts of noise on cognitive ability were at one point a part of contemporary experimental psychology. In the past years, this topic has become more focused and is mainly reported in specialized academic articles that are related to noise and health. The most current meta-analytic synthesis by Szalma and Hancock (2011) reveals a vital step in enhancing awareness in the discipline, but it has the disadvantage of failing to be representative of all present approaches or incorporate specialized research on the subject. In their studies, Szalma and Hancock showed that the impacts of noise are greatly dependent on the kind of noise and the characteristic of the task being performed. This conclusion is in line with that of previous research, which considered research studies in addition to that conducted by Szalma and Hancock. Some of the issue that have been omitted in these studies, and affects understanding of effects of noise on cognitive ability and performance include: impacts of noise on low alertness state, personal differences in the impacts of noise and effects of nocturnal noise exposure on performance the proceeding day. Another method that can outline the effects of noise on performance is the degradation of working memory. In their studies, Smith., & Miles (1985) argued that it is the environment of working memory assignments that pronounced noise effects will be observed. The main explanation of this is the distraction or deviation of attention from the present assignment. This impact, which can be caused by other distractions, is linked to the observed effects of stress on situation awareness. A noise specific method of working memory degradation is that of the disruption to information held in the articulatory loop segment. When this short-term storage mechanism processes information in auditory form (which is also referred to as inner speech) the potential for auditory noise to disrupt it in cannot be ignored. Another alternative explanation for the effect of noise on performance is its potential to increase the mental work load enforced by a given assignment environment, which in turn lowers the cognitive resources accessible for assignment allotment (Baranski et al, 2003). This impact appears to be intuitive because of the following reasons: stressors have the characteristic of disrupting attention to assignment irrelevant thoughts and noise causes irritation. An example of a task irrelevant thought that is prevalent in these circumstances is worry. Subjective predispositions to threats to present objectives cause performers to view that that the task surpasses their ability to perform it. Therefore, individuals will put more effort to assignment performance in the presence of noise has it has been revealed by endocrine markers effort and personal-report measures (Matthew, 2000). The most recent study by Macken, Phelps and Jones (2009) posited that the most significant disruption of attention is caused by the competition between task irrelevant and task relevant sequences of data. This is to mean that the serial memory of sequence component sis interrupted by the sequence of segments of irrelevant information. The argument by Macken et al is that their proposition accounts for revelations that irrelevant sound interrupts memory of component sequences instead of the components themselves. The limitation of this model is that it cannot be generalized to all impacts on noise on cognitive ability and performance. The present research study will attempt to determine the impacts of noise on the cognitive ability and performance of university students by use of loud music as the source of the unwanted sound. A general conclusion from studies on the impact of noise on cognition and performance is that the assignment being performed has to be intricate and cognitively challenging (xxx) to be negatively impacted by noise. Previous studies on the topic have revealed that simple and repetitive assignments are not negatively impacted by noise. For assignments that are easy, uninteresting and well learned, noise may even enhance performance. Therefore in determining noise sensitive assignments, focus must be on tasks that are complex and needs more cognitive resources. Research hypotheses Loud noise has a disruptive effect on university student’s academic achievement and cognitive performance. Research methodology Design This research study used a mixed method research construct that would utilize repeated measures. There is only one independent variable, which is noise intensity and would be measured on two levels, chronic and acute intensity. The dependent variable in the study is the cognitive ability of the participants. The 30 participants in the study will be selected randomly for the two levels. The selection into which group will utilize randomization and the study will be done repeatedly for six times. The participants will be required to read a given content for ten minutes under the two conditions and take a test regarding what they have read for another ten minutes. The choice to repeat the experiment for six times is to realize the randomization threshold. Furthermore the test will conducted during the different times of the day, early in the morning, at the course of the day and late at night. The research will have three confusing variables, lighting of the room, room temperature and time of the day. To minimize their impact on the experiment, all the studies for all levels will be conducted in the same room. The length, temperature and lighting of the room will be kept constant. Participants The research sample will be made up of 30 college students between the ages of eighteen and twenty five. The sample will have an equal number of both genders. As the participants arrived at the research room, they were randomly assigned to one of the two experimental groups. They were further required to sign an informed consent form before participating in the study. Materials The participants were given a one page published manuscript to read containing the study material. The manuscript should have been written to suit the expected education level of the sample of students. During the time that the participants read the script, loud music of 65 Decibels was played in the background through earphones. All the participants were seated at laptops with the music playing via Windows Media Player. The music played was rock, and was selected from the billboard 100 and it comprised wake-up call by maroon five. The music in both levels was played for ten minutes. The cognitive ability test used in the study comprised five questions on three subjects. In the first subject, participants were given graphical representations of daily average number of swimmers in the University swimming pool that contained bars for males and females; the questions for this section were: 1. In which year was the number of average swimmers the highest? 2. How many more males used the swimming pool than females in 2009? The second test involved representation of nutritional values of a product W then followed by the following questions: 3. How many fat calories will be consumed by eating two cups of product W? 4. How many dietary fiber grams should someone with 2000-calorie diet eat if he has already had one cup of product W today? The last subject had one question where participants were given the annual sales of Mercedes in the European market and then followed by the question: 5. How many dietary fiber grams should someone with 2000-calorie diet eat if he has already had one cup of product W today? Apparatus and materials Thirty laptops Earphones CDs rock music Manuscripts containing study and test material Procedure Upon arrival, the participants were welcomed and given consent forms to fill. They were told which group of the experiment they were being assigned to. The study material was distributed to the participants and rock music was played for ten minutes after which the participants were instructed to press the stop button and remove the earphones. This was then followed by the test section where participants were given the test questions. Then test took another ten minutes and then participants were instructed to hand over their test sheets. To limit extraneous variables such as distractions, participants were instructed to remain seated until the recommended time elapsed. The test scores were analyzed by awarding percentages to the right answers. Results A one-way between subjects analysis of variance was utilized to determine if listening to music in the two levels (acute and chronic) while studying gives lower test score percentages. The results from the study showed limited differences between the test scores of the acute group (mean = 64.23) and (standard deviation = 14.68), and for the chronic group (mean = 66.10) and (standard deviation = 11.54). Data results tables   Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 Column 4 Column 5 Column 1 1 Column 2 0.331928 1 Column 3 -0.2055 -0.10558 1 Column 4 -0.28089 0.514904 0.455023 1 Column 5 0.209105 -0.58943 0.339469 -0.18112 1   Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 Column 4 Column 5 Column 1 1 Column 2 -0.57435 1 Column 3 0.036245 0.235694 1 Column 4 -0.64271 0.934559 0.428709 1 Column 5 -0.58981 0.037039 -0.53958 0.095089 1 Anova: Single Factor SUMMARY Groups Count Sum Average Variance Column 1 6 381.88 63.64667 5.587987 Column 2 6 382.16 63.69333 10.93795 Column 3 6 382.98 63.83 12.99176 Column 4 6 389.14 64.85667 12.47927 Column 5 6 389.76 64.96 7.41516 ANOVA Source of Variation SS df MS F P-value F crit Between Groups 10.25139 4 2.562847 0.259334 0.901169 2.75871 Within Groups 247.0606 25 9.882424 Total 257.312 29         Anova: Two-Factor Without Replication SUMMARY Count Sum Average Variance Row 1 5 331.76 66.352 1.52532 Row 2 5 329.42 65.884 5.22058 Row 3 5 323.75 64.75 15.5075 Row 4 5 313.98 62.796 33.01263 Row 5 5 315.42 63.084 18.17393 Row 6 5 329.28 65.856 10.69763 Column 1 6 393.67 65.61167 10.5797 Column 2 6 378.89 63.14833 25.17782 Column 3 6 400.21 66.70167 13.34514 Column 4 6 379.08 63.18 7.48236 Column 5 6 391.76 65.29333 10.54203 ANOVA Source of Variation SS df MS F P-value F crit Rows 58.30527 5 11.66105 0.840952 0.536498 2.71089 Columns 59.22045 4 14.80511 1.067689 0.398398 2.866081 Error 277.3299 20 13.8665 Total 394.8556 29         Discussion The research hypothesis was that noise negative affected the cognitive ability of participants. The use of two levels of noise was to remove the limitations of previous studies such as that of Macken et al (1999), where the type of noise was cited as one of the reasons of the inconclusiveness of the study outcomes. It was expected that acute music will lead to participants in that group scoring lower test results than those in the other group due to the pervasiveness of acute noise. Results from this study did not support the hypothesis. One limitation of this present study is the insufficient number of participants. Another one was that there was lack of a manipulation check on noise distraction; therefore the researchers could not ascertain that acute noise was more distracting than chronic noise. This study supports the null hypothesis that noise of 60 to 65 decibels does not negatively affect the cognitive performance of students. The results from this study do not support that of Zsalma and Hancock (2009) that the type of noise could have significant effects on cognitive ability. Basing on the outcomes of the study, the test scores of the two groups showed limited difference. The findings corroborate that of Smith (1989), which showed that noise affected some cognitive abilities such as comprehension. In Dalton& Behm (2007) study, the impact of the type of noise was not cited as an influential factor in determining the general impact of noise on learning. The results from this study reject the hypothesis that loud noise has a disruptive effect on the student’s cognitive ability and performance. One of the reasons for this outcome is that the student’s levels were high enough that it could not be affected by noise in answering the test questions. References Chou, Peter. (2007). The Effects of Background Music on the Reading Performance of Taiwanese ESL Students. Ann Arbor: ProQuest. Dalton, B. H., & Behm, D. G. (2007). Effect of Noise and Music on Human and Task Performance: A Systematic overview. Occupational Egornomics, 7, 143–153. Hygge, S. (2003). Noise exposure and cognitive performance – Children and the elderly as possible risk groups. WHO Brusells, 1(3). Macken, W. J., Phelps, F. G., & Jones, D. M. ( 2009). What causes auditory distraction?Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16, 139– 144. doi: 10.3758/PBR.16.1.139 Smith, A. P. (1989). A review of the effects on noise on human performance. Scundrnavian. Journal of Psychology, 30, 185–206. Smith, A. P., & Miles. (1985). The combined effects of noise and nightwork on human function. (D. Oborne, Ed.) (pp. 33–41). London: Taylor & Francis. Smith, D., Baranski, J., Thompson, M., & Abel, S. (2003). The effects of background noise on cognitive performance during a 70 hour simulation of conditions aboard the International Space Station. Noise & Health: A BiMonthly Inter-disciplinary International Journal, 6(21), 3–16. Smith-Jackson, T. L., & Klein, K. W. ( 2009). Open-plan offices: Task performance and mental workload. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 29, 279– 289. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2008.09.002 Szalma, J. L., & Hancock, P. A. (2011). Noise Effects on Human Performance: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 137(4), 682–707. Matthew, G. (2000). Human Performance: Cognition, Stress, and Individual Differences. New York: Psychology Press, 2000 Appendices Tables of raw data Chronic noise: performance in percentages Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Exp 1 67.25 66.26 67.91 65.35 64.99 Exp 2 66.47 66.79 68.90 64.11 63.15 Exp 3 63.95 59.62 69.34 62.86 67.98 Exp 4 70.21 56.44 67.32 59.44 60.57 Exp 5 65.22 60.45 59.44 60.72 69.59 Exp 6 60.57 69.33 67.30 66.60 65.48 Acute noise: performance in percentages Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Exp 1 63.98 64.73 60.56 62.70 60.81 Exp 2 59.88 62.54 69.34 68.73 64.56 Exp 3 62.91 58.79 61.47 62.86 67.98 Exp 4 65.49 61.73 65.44 60.11 67.41 Exp 5 62.94 67.14 60.38 66.03 63.06 Exp 6 66.68 67.23 65.79 68.71 65.94 Standardized instructions 1. Fill the consent form. 2. Fill the demographics sheet. 3. Remain seated until the study period is over. Read More