1973 Volume 11 Issue 3 Pages 77-83
Effect of unpleasant feeling due to pure sound (4000 Hz) on stress response result-ing from performance of mental tasks were investigated. Under four environmental conditions consisted of three sound pressure levels (70, 80, 90 dB) of pure sound and a 40 dB of a background fan-noise (control condition), an "addition-subtraction task" of two figures was assigned to the subjects for 15 min at the maximum performance rate in each condition.
In a control experiment where the subjects were not at task, any appreciable change was not found out in 16 physiological indices under the four conditions. The pure sound also hardly affected the physiological indices of the subjects at the task except a little decline in the serum levels of proteins which is rather an opposite change of that in the stress response. The pure sound gave rise to a fairly unpleas-ant feeling in the subjects whether at task or not, but had no effect on performance or error of the task.
Then the results showed that unpleasant feelings due to ordinary environments will be scarcely influencial on both the stress response and task performance of men at such mental tasks.