A laboratory experiment exploring the effect of chronic- and background noise on cognitive performance and motivation

Exposure to uncontrollable and unpredictable environmental stressors like noise can induce cognitive deficits. When exposed with unpredictable (changing state) background noise, children perform significantly worse on short-term memory tasks. Additionally, motivation to persist at a difficult task decreases when exposed to noise before or during a task. The latte is associated with learned helplessness. It is assumed that vulnerability to the development of learned helplessness and its motivation-altering effects are increased by chronic noise exposure, although the findings are inconsistent. Some studies have argued that the effects are due to cognitive fatigue and not necessarily learned helplessness. Age and coping mechanisms may play a role as well. This study aims to further investigate the relationships between chronic noise exposure, cognitive performance, cognitive fatigue and motivation
between children in different age groups. A laboratory experiment is designed where participants perform a serial recall task and the Stroop color word test either with background noise, to increase cognitive load, or in silence as a control, followed by a motivation task in silence. Chronic noise exposure is taken into account by letting the participants indicate their current and past places of residence and education. Using noise maps, a comprehensive estimation can be made of the chronic noise exposure over their lifetime, as past exposure may affect current cognitive functioning as well. In this paper, the design and first pilot results
of the study are presented.