Conference_programme: 18.4 - Office noise : psychological effects and room acoustic design
Lecture: Comparison study of three Speech Masking Sounds on Employees’ Task Performance in Open-Plan Office environments
Author(s): Tavelidou Eleni, Jiang Jian, Barlow Christopher
Summary:
This pilot study aims to investigate the impacts of three speech masking sounds (water stream, pink noise, instrumental music) on occupants’ performance as well as to draw conclusions about potential correlations between the actual performance and the perceived disruption by nearby speech, efficiency of each masking sound and stress. Ten participants were tested under four different noise conditions, three of which included the aforementioned masking sounds and one unmasked background speech. Typical office sounds were also added to the background to resemble the audible environment of an open-plan office (OPO). A five-minute short-term memory test, which was designed to examine the participants’ cognitive performance, followed by a short questionnaire for subjective evaluations were conducted in this within-subject design study. The results indicated that there was no main effect of sound condition to the participants performance or subjective responses. However, two evaluations of marginal statistical significance were identified with regard to the efficiency of the masking sound during pink noise and instrumental music as well as the perceived stress during unmasked speech and instrumental music. Although further investigations are still required, this pilot study has already highlighted the potential impact of different masking sounds on individuals’ performance.
Corresponding author
Name: Ms Eleni Tavelidou
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Country: United Kingdom
