Reappraisal of the relationship between noise and human performance by means of a subsidiary task measure

Abstract

Investigated the notion that where demands imposed by the task and concurrent environmental stress are within the operator's total information-handling capacity, the task can be performed substantially without errors. For performance degradation to occur, the operator's channel capacity must be exceeded. It was assumed that unpredictable noise in combination with multiple task performance would result in such an overload, whereas the introduction of predictable noise would not have such an effect. Ss were 23 undergraduates. A subsidiary task method consisting of the delayed recall of randomly presented digits was used to measure overload. As expected, the use of unpredictable, as opposed to predictable noise resulted in performance degradation on the subsidiary task. Performance on the primary task was unaffected by either type of noise. It is concluded that results reflect a reduction in spare mental capacity as a function of the aversiveness of the noise stressor. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)