Contribution

The Impact of Everyday Distractor Sounds in the Sustained Attention to Response Task

Authors

* Presenting author
Day / Time: 18.03.2025, 15:20-16:00
Room: Hall E, Poster Island H
Typ: Poster
Session: Psychoacoustics (Poster Island H)
Information: The posters will be exhibited in Hall E north from Tuesday to Thursday, sorted by thematic context in the poster island indicated in the session title. The poster session at the specified time offers the opportunity to enter into discussion with the authors.
Abstract: Noise annoyance is an adverse outcome of excessive noise exposure. The subjectivity of annoyance makes it difficult to study, however, it is assumed to be closely related to distraction. Sustained attention is a significant component of attentional processes acting against distraction. The Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) has been proposed as a measure that correlates with slips of attention in everyday life. The SART brings participants into a state of automatic response to frequent stimuli. Sustained attention is then needed to inhibit a response to a specific infrequent target. In this work, it is investigated if the SART can be applied to detect degradation of sustained attention due to sounds as external distractors. SART performance under the presence of indoor and outdoor sounds is compared to a silent control condition. Correct inhibition of response and reaction time are hypothesized to reflect the resistance to disturbance in the participants. The effect of sound conditions on these variables is analyzed in a repeated-measures ANOVA. The findings provide insights into the suitability of the SART as an objective measure of the distraction due to sounds in everyday life.