Three experiments examine what is widely reported to be one of the most common forms of interference in open‐plan office environments—the effect of background noise. Experiment 1 investigates whether office noise (with or without speech) is disruptive to two office‐related tasks: memory for prose and mental arithmetic. The results show that whereas office noise with speech disrupts performance on both tasks, office noise without speech disrupts performance on the mental arithmetic task only. Experiment 2 investigates the memory for prose task more closely by varying the duration and the meaning of the background noise. Experiment 3 examines whether the meaning of speech is important to the disruption of a mental arithmetic task. The results show that both speech and office noise can disrupt performance on memory for prose and mental arithmetic tasks, and the effect is independent of the meaning of the irrelevant speech. These results are presented and interpreted in light of current research and theories regarding the effect of background noise.

Irrelevant sound tends to break through selective attention and impair cognitive performance. This observation has been brought under systematic scrutiny by laboratory studies measuring interference with memory performance during exposure to irrelevant sound. These studies established that the degree of interference depends on the properties of the irrelevant sound as well as those of the cognitive task. The way in which this interference increases or diminishes as characteristics of the sound and of the cognitive task are changed reveals key functional characteristics of auditory distraction. A number of important practical implications that arise from these studies are discussed, including the finding that relatively quiet background sound will have a marked effect on efficiency in performing cognitive tasks.

A field study assessed subjective reports of distraction from various office sounds among 88 employees at two sites. In addition, the study examined the amount of exposure the workers had to the noise in order to determine any evidence for habituation. Finally, respondents were asked how they would improve their environment (with respect to noise), and to rate examples of improvements with regards to their job satisfaction and performance. Out of the sample, 99% reported that their concentration was impaired by various components of office noise, especially telephones left ringing at vacant desks and people talking in the background. No evidence for habituation to these sounds was found. These results are interpreted in the light of previous research regarding the effects of noise in offices and the 'irrelevant sound effect'.

No abstract

No abstract

The authors examined whether background noise can be habituated to in the laboratory by using memory for prose tasks in 3 experiments. Experiment 1 showed that background speech can be habituated to after 20 min exposure and that meaning and repetition had no effect on the degree of habituation seen. Experiment 2 showed that office noise without speech can also be habituated to. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that a 5-min period of quiet, but not a change in voice, was sufficient to partially restore the disruptive effects of the background noise previously habituated to. These results are interpreted in light of current theories regarding the effects of background noise and habituation; practical implications for office planning are discussed.Background noise is reported to be one of the most common forms of interference in open-plan office environments (Boyce, 1974; Keighley & Parkin, 1981;Klitzman & Stellman, 1989), yet very little relevant systematic research has been conducted. The few studies that have addressed the problem have shown that excessive background noise may result hi office worker discomfort and stress, lack of concentration, low levels of performance, and reduced efficiency (Loewen

No abstract

Cognitive performance, particularly on a number of tasks involving short-term memory for order, is impaired by the mere presence of irrelevant background sound. The current study examines the features of the irrelevant sound that determine its disruptive potency. Previous research suggests that the amount of variability in an irrelevant stream is related to the degree of disruption of memory. The present experiments used a parametric approach to manipulate degree of change more precisely. Increasing levels of degradation, effected either by low-pass filtering (speech) or by digital manipulation (speech and nonspeech), monotonically decreased the degree of interference. The findings support the following propositions: (i) the degree of physical change within an auditory stream is the primary determinant of the degree of disruption; and, (ii) the effects of irrelevant speech and irrelevant nonspeech sounds are functionally similar.