Investigating the effects of exposure to office noise types on cognitive function and noise annoyance based on personality characteristics: An experimental study

No comparative research has investigated the effect of tonal noise and background speech on cognitive functions. Therefore, this study aims to determine the impacts of tonal noise and background speech noise on cognitive function and noise annoyance based on personality traits. Twenty-five male students of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences with normal and healthy hearing participated in 4 simulated 50-min scenarios in an indoor environment. The cognitive functions including reaction time, sustained attention, and working memory were measured by PVT, CPT, and n-Back tests respectively. At the end of each test session, the noise annoyance was evaluated by the ISO-15666 questionnaire. According to the results of the repeated measures ANOVA test, a significant difference in mean reaction time in the n-Back and PVT tests was observed ( p < .05). The significant difference in mean correct response in the n-Back test was not observed. The highest rate of perceived noise annoyance has been observed in exposure to 65 dB tonal noise with a mean and standard deviation of 41.52 ± 7.56. A positive correlation was observed between the reaction time of PVT and CPT tests and the neuroticism dimension, and its values were reported as 0.410 and 0.423, respectively. Tonal noise and background speech can reduce cognitive performance and acoustic comfort considering noise sensitivity and age of participants. These have special rules for causes of employees’ distraction in office room.