Impairing effects of noise in high and low noise sensitive persons working on different mental tasks

Objective There is no information of mental strain in noise sensitive persons working under moderate levels of noise. The aim of the study was to determine relevant dimensions of impairing effects differentiating between noise sensitive and insensitive persons. Methods 56 participants (27 men, 29 women; 18–31 years old) were classified into 28 low and 28 high noise sensitive persons. They worked either on a grammatical reasoning task (GRT) or a mental arithmetic task (MPT) under realistic road traffic scenarios [LAeq 55 dB(A)]. Afterwards they rated their annoyance and subjective mental strain. Results A multivariate analysis of variance provided significant effects for the individual noise sensitivity ( P