Psychology of the Scientist: XLI. Continuous Noise Can Degrade Performance When Using Badly Designed Equipment: A Case History
| Autor: | Poulton Ec |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 1980 |
| Předmět: |
Masking (art)
Communication Auditory feedback Point (typography) business.industry Science Speech recognition Control (management) Poison control Experimental and Cognitive Psychology History 20th Century Sensory Systems Key (music) Task (project management) Noise Equipment and Supplies Task Performance and Analysis Humans Psychology Cues Arousal business Perceptual Masking |
| Zdroj: | Perceptual and Motor Skills. 50:319-330 |
| ISSN: | 1558-688X 0031-5125 |
| DOI: | 10.2466/pms.1980.50.1.319 |
| Popis: | Summary.-An acclaimed important discovery was made in the early 1950s that noise degrades the performance of certain manual tasks directly, by a mechanism other than the masking of sounds. It now appears that this is not so. The unravelling of the mystery is described, together with some of the repercussions and implications. This paper describes a mystery which took 25 years to unravel. During this time a good deal of nonsense was spoken and written about the effects of noise upon manual tasks, because a key detail was not reported. Certain manual tasks are performed reliably less well in continuous noise. It is now clear that these tasks all have a built-in difficulty of one kind or another. The key detail, which took so long to uncover, is that these tasks also provide an audible cue when the person responds correctly. This cue is masked by the noise. In the control condition the person has the audible cue to tell him when he responds correctly. The noise deprives him of the cue, so he performs less well. Continuous noise has two main effects upon a person. First, noise produces deafness if it is intense enough and the person is exposed to the noise for a sufficiently long time. Second, noise masks sounds. Intense noise prevents a person from hearing what is being said to him (Kryter, 1970; Poulton, 1979b, Chap. 3). During World War I1 it was believed that noise might also have a third and more direct effect upon a person performing a manual task, but the experimental evidence is inconclusive. The one laboratory task reported at Harvard to be performed reliably less well in continuous noise involves tracking along a narrow winding pathway. The number of times the person leaves the pathway in error is recorded by an electric counter. The task is performed reliably more slowly and less accurately in the noise. But, as the Harvard experimenters point out (see the review by Stevens, 1972), the clicks of the electric counter can be heard in the control condition. Thus the deterioration in the presence of noise could result from the subjects' not being able to hear the clicks. In the control condition the audible clicks presumably supply supplementary auditory feedback. When the visual task is difficult, supplementary auditory feedback sometimes |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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