title: Low-arousal speech noise improves performance in N-back task: an ERP study.
abstract: The relationship between noise and human performance is a crucial topic in ergonomic research. However, the brain dynamics of the emotional arousal effects of background noises are still unclear. The current study employed meaningless speech noises in the n-back working memory task to explore the changes of event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by the noises with low arousal level vs. high arousal level. We found that the memory performance in low arousal condition were improved compared with the silent and the high arousal conditions; participants responded more quickly and had larger P2 and P3 amplitudes in low arousal condition while the performance and ERP components showed no significant difference between high arousal and silent conditions. These findings suggested that the emotional arousal dimension of background noises had a significant influence on human working memory performance, and that this effect was independent of the acoustic characteristics of noises (e.g., intensity) and the meaning of speech materials. The current findings improve our understanding of background noise effects on human performance and lay the ground for the investigation of patients with attention deficits.
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Science and Medical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Longzhu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Yunzhe
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Dandan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.forename: Yuejia
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Luo
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001143:Arousal; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004644:Emotions; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D009622:Noise; D011930:Reaction Time; D013060:Speech; D055815:Young Adult