Noise annoyance during the performance of different nonauditory tasks

Three experiments were performed to study the effects of an ongoing task on the annoyance response to noise. In the first two experiments a total of five tasks were used: three versions of a proofreading task, a finger-dexterity task, and a complex reaction time (RT) task. Subjects performed the tasks during exposure to two levels of a continuous broadband noise. Task was of no consequence for rated annoyance. Four tasks were used in Experiment 3: proofreading, complex RT, grammatical reasoning, and simple RT. A third type of noise, irrelevant speech, was added to the broadband noises. Rated annoyance was lower during simple RT than during the reasoning and proofreading tasks, especially in the irrelevant speech condition. The difference corresponded to a 6-dB difference in noise level. It was concluded that task differences probably only explain a small part of the widely differing noise tolerance levels at different work places.