Effects of acoustical noise on annoyance, performance and fatigue during mental memory task

This paper describes the effects of meaningful and meaningless external acoustical noise, at various sound pressure level values, on participants during a mental task. That is, the authors focused on the psychological impression of `annoyance' caused by noise, and `performance' indicated by factors such as percentage of correct answers and reaction time. More specifically, the authors discussed how these two items depend on the sound pressure level value of noise, and how they change due to meaningful or meaningless noise. Moreover, the difference between subjective feelings of `fatigue' before and after the task, both with and without noise was considered. Furthermore, an investigation was made into how the above items change in the case of aural or visual task presentations. The task was the probe digit, which is a short-term memory task. As a result, the importance of reducing meaningful external noise at low sound pressure level values was shown.