Annoyingness of Aircraft Noise in Relation to Cognitive Activity

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Abstract
College students were exposed by means of headphones to two kinds of aircraft noise (helicopter and jet) at three levels of loudness (60, 70, and 80 dB) while engaging in two tests of intelligibility and 12 cognitive tasks. In addition, the annoyingness of the noise was rated on a seven-point scale for each source/loudness combination in each task. Individual-differences measures (embedded figures, locus-of-control, and test anxiety) were also obtained. No performance difference related to noise was obtained in any of the cognitive tasks, and using the individual-difference measures as co-variates made no difference. In a second experiment a limited set of five modified cognitive tasks was used, again without producing any significant results. Finally, a third experiment utilized four cognitive tasks, a perceptual-motor task (Rotary Tracking) and intermittent rather than continuous noise, and yielded the same results. It was concluded that the failure to find performance differences on the cognitive tasks was probably due to the fact that concern for the welfare of the subjects limited the stimuli to loudness levels that were too low to be effective.
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