Abstract
The effects of everyday noise on free recall. This paper compares human performance, when subjects are working under quiet conditions and in the presence of two types of everyday noise played free-field at a moderately loud level. The assigned task involved free recall of several categorized lists. The three sound conditions used in the experiments were previously classed by the subjects on a pleasantness scale. The analysis of the data revealed the absence of a statistically significant principal effect of the noise conditions on performance in the assigned task. However, significant differences between the objective performance scores obtained by the subjects and their opinions under each noise condition have been found. These differences could be ascribed to the subject psychophysical adaptation and the election of a compensating strategy.
