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Dianne C. Berry*
Three experiments examine what is widely reported to be one of the most common forms of interference in open-plan office environments-the effect of background noise. Experiment 1 investigates whether office noise (with or without speech) is disruptive to two office-related tasks: memory for prose and mental arithmetic. The results show that whereas office noise with speech disrupts performance on both tasks, office noise without speech disrupts performance on the mental arithmetic task only. Experiment 2 investigates the memory for prose task more closely by varying the duration and the meaning of the background noise. Experiment 3 examines whether the meaning of speech is important to the disruption of a mental arithmetic task. The results show that both speech and office noise can disrupt performance on memory for prose and mental arithmetic tasks, and the effect is independent of the meaning of the irrelevant speech. These results are presented and interpreted in light of current research and theories regarding the effect of background noise.
Background noise is reported to be one of the most common forms of interference in open-plan office environments (Boyce, 1974; Keighley & Parkin, 1981; Klitzman & Stellman, 1989). However, despite the potential seriousness of the problem, very little relevant systematic research exists. On the one hand, the applied psychology literature largely concentrates on assessing the costs and benefits of open-plan offices to the organization rather than to the individual office worker. On the other hand, although the cognitive psychology literature has provided a wealth of data on the deleterious effects of irrelevant speech, no studies have actually examined the effects of real office noise. The present study therefore tries to redress this imbalance by examining the effects of office noise on office-related tasks.
In the applied psychology literature, the few studies that have addressed the problem have shown that excessive background noise may result in employee discomfort and stress, lack of concentration, low levels of performance and reduced efficiency (Loewen & Suedfeld, 1992; Sundstrom, Town & Rice, 1994). Other studies have shown that extraneous background speech is often cited as a particular annoyance in the modern office (Boyce, 1974; Keighley & Parkin, 1981; Nemecek & Grandjean, 1973).
In the cognitive psychology literature, the irrelevant speech effect was...