Impairing effects of noise in high and low noise sensitive persons working on different mental tasks

Objective  There is no information of mental strain in noise sensitive persons working under moderate levels of noise. The aim of the study was to determine relevant dimensions of impairing effects differentiating between noise sensitive and insensitive persons. Methods  56 participants (27 men, 29 women; 18–31 years old) were classified into 28 low and 28 high noise sensitive persons. They worked either on a grammatical reasoning task (GRT) or a mental arithmetic task (MPT) under realistic road traffic scenarios [LAeq 55 dB(A)]. Afterwards they rated their annoyance and subjective mental strain. Results  A multivariate analysis of variance provided significant effects for the individual noise sensitivity (P < 0.01) and the kind of task being performed (P < 0.01). To determine to what extent the rating scales lead to a differentiation of the four groups, a 2-factorial discriminant analysis was carried out subsequently. Results showed, that psycho-physiological effort and emotional strain differentiated best between the noise sensitivity groups and psycho physiological effort and focus on tasks (attention) separated the tasks. Conclusion  Noise sensitive persons are more distracted by noise than insensitive persons. Furthermore the results suggest that noise sensitive subjects do not only evaluate a noisy situation as more annoying but experience higher levels of strain than insensitive persons.