Contribution
The influence of the acoustic environment on ratings during different work tasks in the same virtual office
* Presenting author
Abstract:
A listening test was performed to evaluate the memory performance in different room acoustic conditions of a virtual multi-person office. The listening experiment was subdivided into two parts. First, the participants had to read three texts under three different room acoustic conditions. During the reading task, the office was occupied by ‘co-workers’ arranging appointments by phone calls (irrelevant speech). This was designed as the first immersion task into the acoustical environment. The participants needed to rate on annoyance (ISO/TS 15666) and task load (NASA TLX) as well as on sound quality (ISO/TS 12913-2). In the next part of the study the participants had to memorise word lists. A female lay speaker read 15 words per list and the participants had to remember as much words as possible. During the auditory work task, conversations continue to be held. Eight word lists were presented in two different room acoustic conditions, four word lists in each condition. In addition to the recall of the memorised words, ratings related to ISO/TS 15666, ISO/TS 12913-2 and NASA TLX had to be provided. The subject of this contribution are the varying task load and annoyance rating results depending on the different tasks.