Research Design Connection: Performance-Sapping Office Noise

by Sally Augustin, Ph.D. | February 6th, 2017

  Research by Tamesue confirms that “meaningful” office noise degrades professional performance. A press release detailing findings he presented at the 5th Joint Meeting Acoustical Society of America and Acoustical Society of Japan reports that, “When carrying out intellectual activities involving memory or arithmetic tasks, it is a common experience for noise to cause an increased psychological impression of ‘annoyance,’ leading to a decline in performance. This is more apparent for meaningful noise, such as conversation, than it is for other random, meaningless noise…the impact of meaningless and meaningful noises on selective attention and cognitive performance in volunteers, as well as the degree of subjective annoyance of those noises, were investigated…selective attention to cognitive tasks was influenced by the degree of meaningfulness of the noise…the subjective experience of annoyance in response to noise increased due to the meaningfulness of the noise…That means that when designing sound environments in spaces used …