PROCEEDINGS of the
23rd International Congress on Acoustics
9 to 13 September 2019 in Aachen, Germany

Studying for an exam in an open-plan study environment: Does
background noise impair performance?
Ella BRAAT-EGGEN1,2 Jikke REINTEN1,3 Maarten HORNIKX1 Armin KOHLRAUSCH1
12

3

Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands

Avans University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands

Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands

ABSTRACT
Students in higher education work for a large part of their time in rather noisy open-plan study environments(OPSEs). A recent field research has shown that almost 40 percent of the students were 'much' to 'very much'
disturbed by background noise while working in an OPSE. Moreover, the students indicated that they werevery disturbed by the background noise when they were studying for an exam. Although the influence of
background noise on different cognitive tasks has been shown in many studies, little is known about thisstudent task. Therefore, the aim of this work is to analyze the influence of background noise on the 'studying
for an exam' task in an OPSE. For this experiment a set of tasks was developed to simulate 'studying for an
exam'. As output measures, the performance of students was measured while performing the simulated
studying task in different realistic background sound scenarios. These sound scenarios varying in backgroundspeech and room acoustics were developed using computational acoustic modelling of an existing OPSE andapplying auralization with student voices. In the current paper the research design and first results of theexperiments are presented.
Keywords: Open-plan study environment, Studying, Background speech, Task performance, Disturbance

1. INTRODUCTION
New learning methods in higher education have led to a diversity in learning environments forstudents. Not only classrooms but also informal learning settings such as open-plan study
environments (OPSEs) become increasingly important (1). An OPSE is a learning environment meant
for students to work on their individual and group tasks (2). In addition to newly designed OPSEs, agrowing number of former libraries has been converted into OPSEs due to advanced digitalization (3).
A study with 500 students, equally divided over 5 OPSEs, has shown that 64 % of the students was
disturbed by the background sound from which 38 % of the students was much to very much disturbed(2). Despite the importance of OPSEs and the high percentage of noise-disturbed students there are
no recommendations for the acoustic requirements of those environments.
This field study on OPSEs (2) has shown that students are mostly disturbed by background speech
while performing cognitive tasks such as reading, writing and studying for an exam. A developed
construct to clarify disruption of cognitive tasks by background noise is called the "DuplexMechanism Account of Auditory Distraction"(DMAAD) (4, 5). This theory describes two mechanisms
responsible for disruption of cognitive tasks by background noise: 'attentional capture' and'interference of processes'. When we consider irrelevant background speech, disruption by attentional
capture arises from sudden or abrupt changes in a speech signal like AAABAAA, or by specificinformation in the speech, like for instance your own name. This suddenly changes, or specificinformation can cause interruption of the focus task. The other mechanism: interference of processes,
occurs if the unintended processing of the background speech interferes with the intended processesof the focus task. For instance, if students perform a semantic task it will interfere with the unintended
processing of background speech which is also a semantic process (6). More intelligible andmeaningful background speech will interfere more with a semantic task like reading or writing thenless intelligible and less meaningful background speech (7, 8, 9, 10).

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The intelligibility of background speech can be influenced by the room acoustics of an OPSE, asa more reverberant room will reduce intelligibility through reflections and due to the increase of thesound level of other background sounds that mask the speech signals (11). Therefore, a good room
acoustic design of an OPSE is a key factor in creating a comfortable and productive learning
environment.
In the earlier mentioned field study on OPSEs (2), students indicated 'studying for an exam' to be
the most disturbed task they perform in an OPSE. Preparing an examination is a complex task andalthough there is a great variety of examination formats and topics, exams in higher education share
a common basic characteristic, they should require higher order thinking skills and encourage greater
conceptual understanding (12). A frequently used model to describe a classification of cognitive skills
is Bloom's taxonomy (13, 14). This taxonomy contains six categories of cognitive skills withincreasing complexity: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. A
later revision of this taxonomy changed the categories in more skills-based levels: remember,
understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create (15). Therefore, when students in higher education
prepare for an exam they do not only have to remember and understand knowledge but also be able toapply, analyze, and evaluate that knowledge. ‘Creating’, the highest cognitive level in Bloom's model
is generally tested in (multidisciplinary) projects.
In this experiment the influence of the background speech on 'studying for an exam' in higher
education will be investigated by using a set of assignments testing higher cognitive skills. We
hypothesize that the intelligibility of background speech will have a negative influence on studying
performance and will be correlated with the perceived disturbance of the students.

2. MATERIALS AND METHODS
2.1 Participants
Until now 33 students recruited from Avans University of Applied Sciences took part in theexperiment. The students (13 female and 20 male) were between 17 and 26 years old (mean=19.9).
The students received an internet voucher or student credits as compensation for participation. For thecomplete experiment 60 students will be recruited (based on a power calculation).
2.2 Background sound scenario's
Four background sound scenarios were developed, one quiet scenario (reference) and three
scenario's containing background speech. The background speech scenario's varied in intelligibility.
They were constructed by auralizations based on computed impulse responses of two room acoustic
models, both variations of an existing OPSE at the Eindhoven University of Technology. The
computational modelling and auralization was performed using Odeon (version 12.12). From theoriginal model of the existing OPSE a more sound absorbing scenario was taken by applying soundabsorbing materials instead of the real materials such as carpet on the floor, an absorbing ceiling andperforated panels on the walls. Additionally, a more reverberant scenario was taken by applying soundreflecting materials such as linoleum on the floor, a concrete ceiling and walls of unperforated panels
and concrete. Furthermore, the number of talkers in the background varied. This resulted in thefollowing sound scenarios:
Table 1 – Background speech scenarios.
Sound Scenario

Reverberation

Background SpeechSound Level LAeq
Background Speech

A&3T

Absorbing (T30=0.6s)

3 Talkers

41 dB(A)A&14T

Absorbing (T30=0.6s)

14 Talkers

54 dB(A)

R&14T

Reverberant (T30=2.3s)

14 Talkers

64 dB(A)The background speech consisted of stories of students about their studies, hobbies and work,
recorded in a sound absorbing room and convolved with the binaural impulse responses calculated by
Odeon. The quiet sound signal (Q) in the control condition was a pink noise signal with the same
sound level as the background noise measured in the existing unoccupied OPSE (30 dB(A)).

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Figure 1 – Floor plan of the modelled OPSE. Positions of receiver (Listener) and fourteen sound sources(Talkers), with the lines indicating the listening and talking direction. Dimensions in mm.
2.3 Task: studying for an exam
The task 'studying for an exam' was simulated by a set of assignments . At first students were
instructed to study an informational text about which they were to be examined later. The texts wereselected from 'The State Exams Dutch as a second Language (NT2)' which are the national language
proficiency exams for non-native adult speakers, who want to start a study at a Dutch University or
want to work in the Netherlands. The selected texts were all the same length and were tested to havea similar level of complexity in a pilot study.
To simulate the time gap and diversion from the topic between studying the comprehensive reading
text (studying for an exam) and answering the questions about the text (doing an exam), which is thecase in a real study situation, a time interval and extra activities were introduced. The chosen tasks
were all up to the standard of a beginning bachelor student. One assignment was to judge conclusions
drawn from two statements on validity, a so-called syllogism or formal logical test (16). A well tested
set of syllogisms, developed by Making Moves B.V. (2019), was used. Subsequently, students wereasked to solve mental arithmetic problems. Finally, the subjects had to answer questions about the
informational text they had been studying at the start of the experiment.
The set of assignments covered all levels of higher order thinking, in accordance with Bloom's
revised taxonomy (15): remembering (reading comprehension, mental arithmetic), understand ing(reading comprehension syllogism, mental arithmetic), applying (mental arithmetic), analyzing(reading comprehension, syllogism, mental arithmetic) and evaluating (reading comprehension,
syllogism). No ‘creating’ elements were included in the assignments, the highest level of cognitive
tasks in Bloom's taxonomy. This choice was made to reduce the duration and complexity of theexperiment.
2.4 Design
A within-participants design was used with repeated measurements. Three different soundscenarios with varying intelligibility of the background speech were used (Table 1) and one quiet
reference sound scenario. The sound environment in the scenarios was varied by changing thereverberation time and the number of background talkers in the OPSE. As dependent variable theperformance of 'studying for an exam' was measured by the number of right answers to thecomprehensive reading test. Furthermore, perceived disruption of the participants was measured by aquestionnaire after each set of tasks. The questionnaire was based on ISO/TS 15666 'Acoustics Assessment of noise annoyance by means of social and socio-acoustic surveys' (17).
.

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2.5 Procedure
The experiment was split up in two parts divided over two days due to the length of the wholeexperiment. At the first day, the set of assignments (Table 2) was tested once as a proof in a shortened
version, and two times for two sound scenarios. The second day the set of assignments was tested fortwo sound scenarios.
After a short introduction from the experimental researcher, the participating students started theexperiment. The test location was a small quiet two-person room meant for audio editing with nowindow, located at Avans University of Applied Sciences. Students worked individually on a laptop
wearing a headphone (Sennheiser HD 380 PRO) throughout the whole experiment. Instructions about
the assignments and procedures were given on the laptop screen. Start and stop instructions were also
given by a voice signal through their headphone. The students were asked to study a text which wasprinted on paper and they were told that they had to answer some questions about the text later in theexperiment. They could use a pen and marker during their study activity. After the set time (Table 2)
they had to put the text including all their notes in a closed box. All assignments (the syllogism, mentalarithmetic, questions about the text, and perception questionnaire) were announced on the laptop
screen and after pushing the ok button the time clock and assignment were started on the laptop. The
elapsed time was shown on the screen, so the students knew how much time there was left to performtheir assignment.
Table 1 – The order and duration of the assignments in the experiment.
Assignment

duration proof test

duration test

[minutes][minutes]

1. Studying text36

2. Syllogism

34

3. Mental arithmetic

3

4

4. Questions text 1

2

4

5. Questionnaire22

The assignments were presented in the same sequence to all participants. The four sound scenarios
were played on the participants headphones' in a counter balanced sequence using a Latin Square
design. The proof set and the first two sets of assignments were done at the same day, the students
had to take a short break after the first two sets. The first-day experiments took about 75 minutes foreach participant in total. On the second day the students only performed two sets of assignments, ashort pause in between the assignment sets. After the last set they also filled in a questionnaire about
their noise sensitivity (18). The second-day experiments took about 60 minutes for each participating
student.

3. FIRST RESULTS
These first results are based on experimental results of 33 participants (target=60 participants). For
this conference paper the assignment to study an informational text (assignment 1, Table 2) andanswering the questions after a time gap (assignment 4, Table 2), as well as the perceived disturbance(assignment 5, Table 2) are analyzed and reported.

3.1 Performance
The performance of the 'studying for an exam' task was measured by the number of correct answers
on the ten questions about the text. Figure 2 shows the study performance for the four sound scenarios.

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Number of Right Answes

9
8
7
6
5
4
Q

A&3T

A&14T

R&14T

Sound scenarios

Figure 2 – Mean values (n=33) of performance of the 'studying for an exam' task with different backgroundsound scenarios: Quiet (Q), Absorbing OPSE and 3 talkers (A&3T), Absorbing OPSE and 14 talkers(A&14T), Reverberant OPSE and 14 talkers (R&14T).
A repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) across the four sound scenarios revealed nosignificant effect of the sound scenarios on 'studying for an exam' performance (p=0.869).
3.2 Disturbance
The perceived disturbance of the 'studying for an exam' task was measured by a questionnaire at
the end of every assignment set. Figure 3 shows the perceived disturbance for the four sound scenarios
on a 5 points scale.
5

Disturbance

4
3
2
1
0
Q

A&3T

A&14T

R&14T

Sound scenarios

Figure 3 – Mean values (n=33) of the perceived disturbance (n=33) during the 'studying for an exam' taskwith different background sound scenarios: Quiet (Q), Absorbing OPSE and 3 talkers (A&3T), Absorbing
OPSE and 14 talkers (A&14T), Reverberant OPSE and 14 talkers (R&14T).
A repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) across the four sound scenarios revealed asignificant effect of the sound scenarios on perceived disturbance (p=.0001). Post-hoc T-tests with
Bonferroni adjustment showed significant differences between the quiet condition and the three otherbackground speech conditions. The differences between all other conditions were not significant.

4. DISCUSSION and CONCLUSIONS
The first data of this experiment does not support our hypothesis: ' the intelligibility of backgroundspeech will have a negative influence on the performance of studying and will be correlated with theperceived disturbance of the students '. Although Figure 2 shows the highest performance when the
background speech is the least intelligible, the scenario with a high reverberation time and 14 talkers,
and the lowest performance when the participants are exposed to the most intelligible backgroundspeech scenario, the absorbing OPSE with 3 talkers, the differences between the means are not5937

significant. Figure 3 shows the participants to be most disturbed by the sound scenario in which thebackground speech is least intelligible, the reverberant OPSE with 14 talkers. The students are theleast disturbed in the quiet situation without background speech. The sound scenario with the highest
intelligible background speech, the absorbing OPSE with 3 talkers, is not significantly more disturbing
than the other sound scenario with background speech.
So far, only 33 participants performed the experiment, half of the statistically required subjects, so
there is no definite proof to reject the hypothesis. Further acquisition and analysis of data will benecessary. We plan to continue the detailed analyses of a total number of 60 participants in the near
future.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by a Doctoral Grant for Teachers by the Netherlands Organization for
Scientific Research (NWO) under grant Number 023.006.02

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