Effects of Sound Masking on Mental Performance with Conversation Noise

Abstract

This study investigated a sound masking effect on mental performance with conversation noise. The subjects were ten healthy young females. They did two mental tasks, typing task and subtraction task, under background noise condition first, and then, under different noise condition. The four noise conditions were recruited; background noise (BN),conversation noise (CN), CN + pink noise (PN), and CN + sound masking noise (SM). Correct numbers of typing task and subtraction task were significantly decreased under CN condition, whereas there were no significant decrements of the performance under other conditions. Subjective comfort on SM condition was higher than on CN condition. The present findings suggest that sound masking noise can prevent negative effect of conversation noise on mental performance and subjective comfort.