The Effect of Background Noise on a “Studying for an Exam” Task in an Open-Plan Study Environment: A Laboratory Study

Abstract

Students can be disturbed by background noise while working in an open-plan study environment. To improve the acoustic quality of open-plan study environments a study was done on the influence of different sound scenarios on students working on a typical student task, “studying for an exam”. Three sound scenarios and a quiet reference sound scenario were developed, based on the sound environment of a real open-plan study environment, with a varying number of talkers in the background and different reverberation times of the study environment. Seventy students worked on a set of tasks simulating a “studying for an exam” task while being exposed to the sound scenarios. This task comprises a reading comprehension task with text memory by delayed answering questions about the text, with additional tasks being performed in the gap between studying the text and retrieving. These additional tasks are a mental arithmetic task and a logical reasoning task. Performance, self-estimated performance and disturbance of students were measured. No significant effect of the sound scenarios was found on performance of students working on the reading comprehension task with text memory and the mental arithmetic task. However, a significant effect of sound was found on performance of students working on the logical reasoning task. Furthermore, a significant effect of the sound scenarios was found on self-estimated performance and perceived disturbance for all tasks from which the reading comprehension task with text memory was the most disturbed task. It is argued that the absence of a detrimental sound effect on the performance of students working on a reading comprehension task with text memory is a result of focusing due to task engagement and task difficulty, both aspects working as a “shield against distraction”.

The impact of IEQ in the university lecture theatres on students’ concentration levels in London

“…Concerns about long-term exposure to noise from aircraft and traffic prompted studies of the impact of learning in noisy environments. In this study, background noise has a negative connection with students’ concentration level, while the effect weight is not significant (0.076), which is in line with a study by Braat-Eggen et al. (2021), they found that an increase in background noise had a negative impact on student attention.…”

Clustering students based on their acoustical-related preferences of study places

“…The outcome of this study showed that TwoStep cluster analysis can be used to identify profiles of clusters based on their acoustical-related preferences. While in previous studies [1], [5] it was concluded that in general students prefer to study in a quiet environment without the presence of background sounds, in this study two profiles were identified that are not concerned with sounds and three profiles were identified that are concerned with sounds of their study places. Furthermore, in a previous study students prefered to study in quiet and private study places with less contact with others [10].…”

“…A study concluded that students prefer to study at home while performing individual study activity, while they prefer to study at the university while doing a collaborative study activity [4]. In a lab study on sound environment of open-plan study environment was found that most university students did not prefer the presence of background sounds, such as speech while they are studying for an exam [5]. On the contrary, a recent study resulted in nine unique profiles of university students based on both IEQ and psychosocial preferences of their study places.…”

Profiling Students Based on the Overlap between IEQ and Psychosocial Preferences of Study Places

“…Furthermore, Roetzel et al [21] revealed that students' preferences of their study places can change with the study-related activities they perform. For instance, Braat-Eggen et al [22] indicated that university students did not prefer background sounds, such as speech, in an open-plan study environment while they were performing cognitive tasks (e.g., studying for an exam).…”