The effect of slightly warm temperature on work performance and comfort in open-plan offices - a laboratory study

Abstract

The aim of the study was to determine the effect of a temperature of 29°C on performance in tasks involving different cognitive demands and to assess the effect on perceived performance, subjective workload, thermal comfort, perceived working conditions, cognitive fatigue, and somatic symptoms in a laboratory with realistic office environment. A comparison was made with a temperature of 23°C. Performance was measured on the basis of six different tasks that reflect different stages of cognitive performance. Thirty-three students participated in the experiment. The exposure time was 3.5 h in both thermal conditions. Performance was negatively affected by slightly warm temperature in the N-back working memory task. Temperature had no effect on performance in other tasks focusing on psychomotor, working memory, attention, or long-term memory capabilities. Temperature had no effect on perceived performance. However, slightly warm temperature caused concentration difficulties. Throat symptoms were found to increase over time at 29°C, but no temporal change was seen at 23°C. No effect of temperature on other symptoms was found. As expected, the differences in thermal comfort were significant. Women perceived a temperature of 23°C colder than men.

Simultaneous effects of irrelevant speech, temperature and ventilation rate on performance and satisfaction in open-plan offices

“…When neutral temperatures (21e25 C) have been compared to higher ones (above 26 C), cognitive performance has been observed to decline at higher temperatures in short-term free recall tasks (Hygge & Knez, 2001), addition and visual tasks (Lan, Wargocki, Wyon, & Lian, 2011) and working memory tasks (H€ aggblom, Hongisto, Haapakangas, & Koskela, 2011). Maula et al (2015;Fig. 1) performed an experiment before our study in the same laboratory environment.…”

“…High temperature has been reported to negatively affect mood, energy, motivation, concentration and the assessment of air quality (Lan et al, 2011;Maula et al, 2015). High temperature has also been found to increase self-rated intensity of somatic symptoms compared with neutral temperature (Lan et al, 2011).…”

Effect of Transient Changes of Air Temperature on Subjective Response of Office Worker in Tropical Country (Case Study: Jakarta, Indonesia)

“…Participants might not aware of their cognitive state since they did not perform any cognitive task. Subjective vote or task that is not cognitive-demanding may not sensitive in indicating arousal level [2,12]. A decrement of arousal level after transient change of temperature change in current study is likely to be clearer if participants perform a certain task since subjective vote might not sensitive enough to represent arousal level.…”

“…Freshness scale was presented as follows; very fresh (7), moderately fresh (6), slightly fresh (5), neutral (4), slightly sleepy (3), moderately sleepy (2), and very sleepy (1). Concentration scale was presented as follows; very easy to concentrate (7), moderately easy to concentrate (6), slightly easy to concentrate (5), neutral (4), slightly hard to concentrate (3), moderately hard to concentrate (2), and very hard to concentrate (1).…”

“…Operative temperature did not directly affect working performance, although many previous studies confirmed that discomfort temperature causing thermal comfort. Thus, induced negative effects on working performance [1,2]. As explained by Sellaro et al [3], decrements in working performance were related to Ego Depletion, a concept of reduced self-control after performing a difficult task.…”