Effects of experimentally imposed noise on task performance of Black children attending day care centers near elevated subway trains.

Investigated whether an experimentally imposed 80 db (A) noise differentially affected the psychomotor, serial memory words and pictures, incidental memory, visual recall, paired associates, perceptual learning, and coding performance of 109 predominantly Black, low socioeconomic status (SES) 5-yr-old children attending daycare centers near and far from elevated subways. Ss were administered psychomotor tasks at the beginning and end of a noisy or quiet play condition and cognitive and perceptual tasks during a noisy or quiet test condition. Factorial analyses revealed that only psychomotor performance was significantly impaired by the 80 db (A) noise. A significant interaction between daycare center environmental noise level and test was found on the coding task, with Ss from relatively noisy daycare centers performing best under noisy test conditions and their counterparts under quiet conditions. Findings suggest that noise does not have a universal effect on children's performance, but the effects vary as a function of the nature of the task and previous exposure to noise. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Annoyance and behavioral aftereffects following interfering and noninterfering aircraft noise.

In Exp I, 120 college Ss aged 17–57 yrs performed 1 of 2 tasks (a listening or a cancellation task) within 1 of 3 auditory environments (continuous noise, intermittent noise, quiet). Aftereffects of noise on performance similar to those found by D. C. Glass and J. E. Singer (1972) were not obtained. Ss reported greater annoyance with noise when they worked on the listening task (with which the noise interfered) than when they worked on a routine cancellation task (with which the noise did not interfere). Exp II (48 Ss) was designed to replicate more closely Glass and Singer's procedures but produced essentially the same results as Exp I. Possible explanations for the absence of aftereffects are discussed. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of classroom noise on performance and activity of second-grade hyperactive and control children.

Two experiments assessed the effects of task-overlapping linguistic noise (ambient noise including conversations) on activity and performance of 24 hyperactive and 24 control children. High and low levels of linguistic classroom noise were each presented while Ss were performing tasks requiring auditory processing of information in a repeated-measures crossover design. Hyperactive Ss were most active and performed math and alphabet tasks worse in high than in low linguistic noise. Control Ss showed the opposite performance and activity pattern. The differential effects of linguistic noise were less pronounced in Exp II when the task was new and more challenging for the control Ss, suggesting that task difficulty may play a role in the effects of overlapping stimulation on both groups. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of noise on intellectual performance.

Studied the effect of realistic noise levels on an intellectually challenging task. 33 undergraduates performed proofreading in quiet or with a background of intermittent teletype noise (70 db). As predicted, noise Ss did not differ significantly from quiet Ss in detecting spelling errors but were poorer at identifying grammatical errors. Contrary to expectations, recall of the content of the proofreading passages was unaffected. Detailed analysis revealed that Ss initially worked more slowly and less steadily during noise bursts than during intervening quiet periods, but more accurately. Results are interpreted in terms of the feedback available to the Ss and the strategies they adopted to cope with the distraction. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of noise on human performance.

"… three experiments relating performance changes to noise levels are reported. Noise levels used were about 80 db representing 'quiet' and 110 db representing 'noise."' Ss in these 3 experiments were paid volunteer male undergraduates. In Experiment I, 9 Ss were exposed to successive half hours of experimental and control sessions "to check Broadbent's previously reported results that performance on a prolonged vigilance task was poorer in noise than in quiet." In Experiment II, 14 Ss were exposed to successive periods of experimental and control sessions "as a result of a suggestion by Miles that Ss working in high energy noise fields could not keep an accurate count on how far they had gone in a repetitive task." In Experiment III, 14 Ss were exposed to successive periods of experimental and control sessions to compare judgments in quiet and in noise. "It is clear that noise produces readily measurable changes in human performance." The effects of psychological stress may have been more important than noise in determining the results. 16 refs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Processing of stimulus properties: Evidence for dual-task integrality.

Assessed the conditions under which dual-task integrality can be fostered by manipulating 4 factors likely to influence the integrality between tasks: intertask redundancy (ITD), the spatial proximity of primary and secondary task displays, the degree to which primary and secondary task displays constitute a single object, and the resource demands of the 2 tasks. The resource allocation policy was inferred from changes in the amplitude of the P300 component of the event-related brain potential. 12 university students participated in 3 experimental sessions in which they performed both single and dual tasks. The primary task was a pursuit step tracking task. The secondary tasks required Ss to discriminate between different intensities or different spatial positions of a stimulus. Task pairs that required the processing of different properties of the same object resulted in better performance than task pairs that required the processing of different objects. These same object-task pairs led to a positive relation between primary task difficulty and the resources allocated to secondary task stimuli. ITD and the physical proximity of task displays produced similar effects of reduced magnitude. (54 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preschoolers' knowledge about attention.

Examined whether 48 3- and 4-yr-olds would understand attention and distraction and whether attention would be affected by a child's interest in the task and the situation's noise level. Miniature toy people, household objects, and rooms depicted 2 episodes about a child in a learning situation. Over several trials, the situations varied in the interest level of the child and/or the surrounding noise level. On some trials, Ss were asked to choose which objects (noisy or quiet) should be removed to increase attention. On other trials, Ss chose which of 2 arrays was more conducive to attending. Most Ss understood that noise and lack of interest hinder attention; they considered interest more important than noise. (8 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Speech-action coordination in young children.

Investigated speech–action coordination in 100 3- and 4-yr-olds using a hammering-board task. Four instructional conditions (instruction, demonstration, vocalization, and no vocalization) were presented in a numeric task ("hit 4 times") and 2 spatial tasks: 3-color (red, green, and yellow) and 4-color (green, red, blue, and yellow). In the numeric task, instruction called for limitation of a naturally perseverative motor act. In the spatial tasks, instruction called for spatio-temporal sequential action counter to the natural spatial order of the pegs in the hammering board. Results from the numeric task suggest that Ss of both ages perseverated, while results from the spatial tasks suggest that Ss of both ages were more heavily influenced by spatial context than by the sequential component of the instruction. In all tasks, the S's concomitant vocalization (counting and naming colors) was more effective than the experimenter's demonstration in reorganizing action to match instructional demands. Findings are interpreted in support of A. R. Luria's (1961) finding of inhibition of perseveration with concomitant overt vocalization and Vygotsky's claim that meaningful concomitant speech facilitates reorganization of unsuccessful action. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Behavioral effects of a noisy environment: Task involvement versus passive exposure.

Compared the effects of noise under active task involvement as opposed to passive exposure, using 80 undergraduate Ss who were assigned to 1 of 4 conditions representing 2 * 2 combinations of task vs no task and noise vs quiet. Performance on a dial-monitoring task was unaffected by noise. Ratings of interest and tenseness were significantly higher under the task condition; tenseness was also higher under noise. On a posttest of resistance to frustration, both noise groups, regardless of task condition, showed a smaller degree of persistence on insoluble puzzles than the no-noise groups. Results suggest that aftereffects of noise are not dependent on the power of noise to disrupt task performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual masking and visual integration across saccadic eye movements.

Studied visual masking and visual integration across saccadic eye movements in 4 experiments. In a 5th experiment, 4 randomly chosen dots from a 3?×?5 dot matrix were presented in 1 fixation, and 4 different dots from the matrix were presented in a 2nd fixation. Ss reported the location of the missing dot. When the 1st display was presented just before the saccade (as in Exps I–III), Ss accurately specified the missing dot location when the dots were presented to the same region of the retina but not when they were presented in the same place in space. When the 1st display was presented well before the saccade (as in Exp IV), Ss performed poorly regardless of retinal or spatial overlap. Results indicate the existence of a short-lived retinotopic visual persistence but provide no support for a spatiotopic visual persistence capable of fusing the contents of successive fixations. It is concluded that transsaccadic integration depends instead on an abstract memory that accumulates position and identity information about the contents of successive fixations. Results are discussed in relation to the work by M. L. Davidson et al (see record 1974-10245-001). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence of preliminary response preparation from a divided attention task.

In a divided attention situation, preliminary response activations produced by stimuli on one channel were revealed through their effects on responses to stimuli on a secondary probe channel. Subjects performed concurrent but independent four-choice reaction-time tasks using the same four response fingers (middle and index fingers on both hands). In the main task, targets were large and small Ss and Ts, and medium-sized Ss and Ts sometimes appeared as distractors. Targets in the probe task were squares differing in location. A response to a probe square was faster if a distractor letter presented just before it had the same name as the target letter corresponding to that square (i.e., assigned to the same response key) than if the distractor letter had a different name—a result indicating that distractor letters cause partial response preparation. The timecourse of the effect demonstrated that preparation was based on preliminary information about distractor name that was available before distractor size had been determined. The results support models in which response preparation can sometimes begin before stimulus recognition has finished. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of neonatal dopamine depletion on spatial ability during ontogeny.

Investigated the effects of neonatal dopamine (DA) depletion on spatial discrimination tasks. Ss were lesioned at 3 and 6 days of age with intraventricular 6-hydroxydopamine preceded by Desipramine. In Exp 1, Ss were tested before weaning for the ability to spontaneously alternate in a T maze both in the presence of their home cage shavings and with a screen covering the shavings. Lesioned Ss were significantly impaired in their ability to spontaneously alternate. Control and lesioned Ss both showed a decrease in performance when the screen prevented full access to the shavings and the magnitude of the impairment was significantly greater for the lesioned animals. In Exp 2, Ss were tested after weaning in an appetitively motivated task in T maze. The task required both a functional working and reference memory. Lesioned Ss were impaired on both the working and the reference components of the task; however, the magnitude of the impairment was greater in the working memory task. Results suggest that early lesions of general DA systems produce deficits in tasks requiring spatial alternation behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The location of noisy visual stimuli.

Examined the results of experiments where Ss were required to detect the misalignment of 2 abutting dot clusters on a monitor screen. Thresholds varied with the square root of dot density and did not appear to be affected by changing the sampling strategy used to generate the random dot clusters. Comparison of the Ss' performance with that expected of 3 information processing strategies suggested that Ss accomplished the task by locating the edges of the dot clusters rather than by extracting measures of global scope or of central position. The efficiency with which edge information was extracted was approximately 50% for low-density stimuli and declined exponentially with increasing dot density. (French abstract) (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparison of the contributions of the frontal and parietal association cortex to spatial localization in rats.

Compared 15 rats with lesions of the medial frontal, orbital frontal, or parietal cortex with 5 rats with complete removal of the neocortex and 5 normal controls on 3 spatial tasks: Morris water task, radial arm maze, and spatial reversals in a Grice box. Decortication produced severe impairments in the acquisition of all 3 tasks. Ss with parietal cortex lesions were relatively unimpaired at any of the tasks, although they had a significant deficit on the spatial reversal task and had a short-term memory impairment on the radial arm maze. In contrast, Ss with medial frontal lesions had a significant, but relatively mild, impairment on the radial arm maze and were poor at learning the water task. Ss with orbital frontal lesions were nearly as impaired on the radial arm maze and water task as decorticate Ss. Results suggest that the frontal and parietal cortex of rats play different roles in the control of spatial orientation but do not support the view that egocentric and allocentric spatial orientation are related to frontal and parietal mechanisms, respectively. In addition, results suggest that the frontal cortex plays a larger role in the control of spatially guided behavior than has been previously recognized and that both the medial frontal and the orbital frontal cortex play a dissociable role in the control of spatial orientation. (60 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a formal theory of flexible spatial behavior: Geometric category biases generalize across pointing and verbal response types.

Three experiments tested whether geometric biases--biases away from perceived reference axes--reported in spatial recall tasks with pointing responses generalized to a recognition task that required a verbal response. Seven-year-olds and adults remembered the location of a dot within a rectangle and then either reproduced its location or verbally selected a matching choice dot from a set of colored options. Results demonstrated that geometric biases generalized to verbal responses; however, the spatial span of the choice set influenced performance as well. These data suggest that the same spatial memory process gives rise to both response types in this task. Simulations of a dynamic field model buttress this claim. More generally, these results challenge accounts that posit separate spatial systems for motor and verbal responses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The roles of stimulus-response compatibility and mental rotation in mirror-image and left-right decisions.

Examined the relative roles of mental rotation and stimulus-response (SR) compatibility in mirror-image and left-right decisions. 15 Ss, aged 19–43 yrs, were shown rotated letters and asked to indicate whether the letters were normal or backward (mirror-image task). Ss were then asked whether a dot would be located to the left or right of each letter if the letter was upright (viewer-centered left-right task) or if the letter was both upright and normal (letter-centered left-right task). The functions relating reaction time (RT) to angular orientation were parallel across the 3 tasks, suggesting that SR compatibility played no role, and that the Ss mentally rotated the letters to the upright in each case. A marked increase in RT to backward letters in the letter-centered task suggested a 2nd rotation in depth to restore the letters to normal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Processing relational and item-specific information: Effects of aging and division of attention.

64 young adults (aged 18–21 yrs) and 32 older Ss (aged 65–83 yrs) encoded items from categorizable lists under incidental learning conditions. Two orienting tasks were used: a category sorting task and a pleasantness rating task. The number of items/category was varied (between 2 and 14) within each list. In addition, 24 young adults performed the orienting tasks while simultaneously engaged in an attention-demanding secondary task (divided-attention condition). Recall declined with both age and division of attention, while recall clustering was greatest for the older Ss and least for the young divided-attention Ss. The effects of category size and orienting task on recall did not vary across groups. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of intermittent, moderate intensity noise stress on human performance.

Studied the effects of prolonged exposure to 2 noise stressors (random and patterned intermittent 0 and 85 db) on the performance of 60 male undergraduates on 3 tasks requiring different abilities (reaction time, rate control, and time-sharing). The sensitivity of alternate metrics of performance degradation was also evaluated within an analysis of covariance design. Ss were randomly assigned to the various treatments, and a series of 2 * 2 * 4 (Noise Intensity * Noise Quality * Trial Blocks) covariance analyses were carried out. The effects of random noise on performance depended on the type of task and performance measure. The reaction-time task was affected, the rate-control task was not, and the time-sharing task was affected only after continued exposure to noise. Patterned noise had insignificant effects. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of brief training on sex-related differences in visual–spatial skill.

83 undergraduates were pretested on 4 standard tests of visual–spatial skill, including the Group Embedded Figures Test and the Space Relations Test of the Differential Aptitude Tests. Half of the Ss were given 3 hrs of training relevant to the spatial tasks presented by 3 of the tests; all Ss were then posttested. The hypothesis that spatial "ability" is susceptible to practice and training effects was strongly supported. MANOVA showed that experimental Ss improved significantly more than controls, males and females improved equally and substantially, and training effects generalized to the untrained spatial task. The hypothesis that females score lower on spatial tests because they lack relevant practice was also supported; when female experimental Ss were compared with male controls on the posttests, the sex-related pretest difference favoring males was eliminated. (45 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of contextual organization on spatial memory of middle-aged and older women.

Examined the memory performance of 20 women aged 31–59 yrs and 20 aged 65–85. Ss reconstructed spatial arrays, replacing miniature objects in either a contextually organized panorama or a noncontextually organized bank of cubicles. Performance of the middle-aged Ss did not differ between the 2 tasks. Older Ss performed as well as middle-aged Ss in the panorama task, but in the cubicles task their scores were lower than in the panorama task and lower than those of the younger Ss in the cubicles task. Results support the conclusion that in a task that allows the use of existing contextual organization as a memory aid, age differences in memory performance disappear. Age differences may be limited to tasks that remove previously learned relationships between items (as in recall of lists of unrelated words), requiring Ss to invent an organizational structure to facilitate recall. Though such tasks predominate in research, they probably do not represent the memory problems met in everyday life, especially by older adults. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)