# Effects of Auditory Pre-Stimulation on Cognitive Task Performance in a Noisy Environment
## 4 Conclusions  
This study empirically elucidated the effects of auditory pre-stimulation on the performance of basic STM/WM tasks in a noisy environment. The major findings were that: (1) the \(\mathbf{E_{F}}\) did not affect the scores of the Corsi block-tapping and 3-back tasks, significantly affecting only the Digit span task score; and (2) the Digit span task performance in the \(\mathbf{E_{F}}\) was improved when mixed noise was provided as a type of auditory pre-stimulation. The current study results have some theoretical and practical implications. First, redesigning existing work can be suggested so that it consists of tasks mainly involving the visuospatial sketchpad and the central executive rather than tasks requiring the phonological loop in an environment with field noise. Second, work tasks requiring the phonological loop could be adversely affected by noise; hence, it is suggested that these work tasks be performed in a less noisy environment. It is expected that using anti-noise tools such as earplugs or noise-cancelling headphones to reduce/eliminate noise can help prevent the deterioration of cognitive task performance. Lastly, if it is inevitably required to perform a task that mainly involves the phonological loop in a noisy environment, providing the noise mixed/masked with white noise prior to the task could contribute to maintaining/recovering the phonological loop function. Some limitations of the current study are acknowledged here together and future research ideas are presented. First, in this study, the presentation time of auditory pre-stimulation was set to five minutes, and the effectiveness was confirmed within a task duration of two minutes and 30 s. Future studies can examine the effects of auditory pre-stimulation while varying the presentation time of the pre-stimulation and task duration in order to further enhance our understanding of the pre-stimulation effects on cognitive task performance. Second, this study used analogue white noise provided by a white noise generator. Future work can consider natural white noise sources, such as nature sounds. In addition to white noise, various types of sounds, such as classical music and participants' preferred music can be included as types of auditory pre-stimulation. In relation to this, as mentioned in the Section 1, several studies demonstrated that listening to classical music prior to a main task increased cognitive task performance [43; 44; 45]. Third, this study recruited participants in their 20s; future studies can recruit older participants in order to understand the interaction effects of auditory pre-stimulation and age. Fourth, while the current study employed the 3-back task which used a series of auditory stimuli, future studies need to consider different variants of the \(n\)-back task, including various input modalities (visual, auditory, etc. ), in order to improve our understanding. Lastly, this study considered only the Borg CR10 scale for mental workload ratings; different types of evaluation methods can also be used for a better understanding of auditory pre-stimulation effects on mental workloads in future studies; for example, galvanic skin resistance (GSR), heart rate variability (HRV), electroencephalogram (EEG), and NASA-TLX can be utilized to evaluate mental workloads. Conceptualization, S.A.; methodology, D.A. and K.K. ; formal analysis, K.K. ; investigation, K.K. ; resources, D.B. ; data curation, S.A.; writing--original draft preparation, M.S. ; writing--review and editing, D.B. and H.L. ; supervision, D.B. ; All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript. This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. 2020R1G1A1013889) and Nuclear Safety Research Program through the Korea Foundation of Nuclear Safety (KoFONS) using the financial resource granted by the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) of the Republic of Korea (No. 2106005).