Conference_programme: 18.4 - Office noise : psychological effects and room acoustic design

Lecture: Proofreading as a method to investigate effects of background noise on cognitive performance in an occupational context: The role of different kinds of constructed mistakes in the reading material employed

Author(s): Sukowski Helga

Summary:
It is well known that background noise - already at moderate sound pressure levels - may have detrimental effects on cognitive performance. A commonly required skill in many work situations is the reading ability. One way to capture reading performance or the effects of noise on reading, respectively, is using a proofreading task.\nPrevious studies about effects on proofreading suggest that different kinds of constructed mistakes in the tasks may be of different sensitivity for noise effects. For example, it was noted in a former study by this author that the semantical errors were easier to find than the grammatical errors. Therefore, a detailed analysis of the types of mistakes is necessary, to allow for valid conclusions about effects on proofreading.\nDuring a pilot study with a newly developed proofreading task including several different kinds of mistakes, participants detected in total significantly more mistakes in a quiet condition than in a condition with speech as a background sound. This result still held as a difference by trend for an analysis only considering the grammatical mistakes. But there were further categories of mistakes that also seem to be more difficult to detect in a condition with background sound compared to a quiet condition.\nThe results of the detailed analysis with respect to the types of constructed mistakes will be used to optimise the proofreading task. The goal is to provide a procedure that allows the detection of detrimental effects of different kinds of noise in an occupational context, while keeping the task lively in using many different types of mistakes. Another aim is to establish awareness for the need to keep an eye on the task itself when drawing conclusions about effects or the lack of effects of noise on reading in the occupational context.

Corresponding author

Name: Dr Helga Sukowski

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Country: Germany