Effect of White Noise on Attention as a Function of Manifest Anxiety

Abstract

The effect of white noise on attention-task performance was examined as a function of the manifest-anxiety level of 30 male undergraduates with concurrent physiological recordings made. Noise interacted with manifest anxiety on two of the four attention tasks such that Ss low in anxiety improved with noise while moderately anxious Ss deteriorated with noise and highly anxious Ss remained the same. Noise had no lasting effect on heart race, skin potential, or attentional performance in general, leading to the conclusion that noise may function either as a distractor or as a behavioral arouser. Some support was gained for the inverted-U hypothesis relating arousal to performance.