Subjective assessments of interference during cognitive tasks in noisy and silent working conditions

In a current research project on effects of noise on cognitive performance and wellbeing, some scales for subjective assessments with respect to the task execution are applied. The aim is to gain insight into how participants experience task processing in different background sound conditions. In the laboratory, participants work on a proofreading task and a concentration task twice within an interval of around one week, once in a silent condition and once in one of various conditions with a background sound. In both sessions, participants are asked after each task to assess four aspects with respect to task processing: (1) experienced effort, (2) concentration, (3) performance and (4) disturbance by the acoustical condition. The scales range from 0 to 100. First, data will be analysed regarding the differences between the assessments in the condition with and without background sound for each sound condition and separately for the two performance tasks. Once all sound conditions are completed, the analysis of the comparison between the groups with different background sound conditions will follow. For both tasks, initial findings for the first sound condition suggest significant differences in the assessments of the scales "concentration" and "disturbance" between the condition with and without noise.