The Effect of Auditory Stimuli on Cognitive Tasks: Objective Performance and Subjective Ratings

• Main Author: Michiko Miyahara
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2011-10-01
• Series: i-Perception
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1068/ic811

Two experiments were conducted to examine the relationship between the objective and subjective effects of disruption caused by auditory stimuli on daily cognitive tasks. Reading with/without proofreading task (for Experiment 1) and reading with/without map task (for Experiment 2) were used as cognitive activities. The speech and office noise were used as auditory stimuli for Experiment 1 and 2. The increase of recall error rate under each auditory condition was used as an objective index of disruption. Two subjective indexes, self estimated performance and self rated annoyance under each auditory stimulus were used as a subjective index to assess the perceived adverse effect of the auditory stimuli. The error rate increased significantly under the auditory stimuli conditions in the reading with proofreading task (Experiment 1) and reading with/without map tasks (Experiment 2). The error rate increased significantly in the reading with proofreading task only under the office noise condition. The results show that estimated performance was generally in agreement with the recall error rate pattern. On the other hand, the annoyance ratings did not match recall performance. The agreement and discrepancy of objective and subjective indexes should be investigated in future experiments.