The Effects of Noise and Reverberation Time on Auditory Sustained Attention

Abstract

The indoor acoustic environment is very important for auditory learning, and the completion of various auditory learning tasks cannot be separated from auditory sustained attention. Noise and reverberation time (RT) are the two most common acoustic indicators that affect attention. Based on this, experiments on auditory sustained attention under two factors of noise masking and reverberation effect alone were conducted in an anechoic chamber and a reverberation chamber, respectively. In addition, nine kinds of RT and signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) (3 RT × 3 SNRs) were also designed and implemented in the paper, and the impact of RT and noise on the perception of auditory sustained attention was analyzed through the above three experimental scenarios. The experimental results show the following: (1) noise type has no significant effect on auditory sustained attention performance, and SNR has a significant effect on omission errors (OEs), commission errors (CEs), and mean reaction time (MRT). All three decline with the increase in SNR; when SNR reaches a certain level, it tends to stabilize, and according to the experimental results, good auditory sustained attention SNR needs at least 18 dB; (2) The effect of RT on auditory sustained attention perception has significant differences. As RT increases, the number of inattentive OE increases, the number of impulses CE increases, and the response time becomes longer; (3) SNR has a significant negative impact on college students’ auditory sustained attention performance, while RT has a less negative effect compared to SNR; (4) The functional relationships between auditory sustained attention performance and SNR and RT in three scenarios were obtained, which can be used to predict inattentive OE, impulse, and MRT in noisy and reverberant environments. This study is the first attempt to explore the influence of noise and RT on the auditory sustained attention of Chinese university students, providing theoretical support for the acoustic design of indoor learning environments, and the findings can fill the gap of the lack of basic experimental data in the current standards of the indoor acoustic environment in China.