NCT05009784

Effects of Natural Sounds on Attention Restoration in Noisy Environment

• Status: Unknown
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 162 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Nanyang Technological University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 35 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

This study aims to examine whether listening to natural sounds in a noisy (traffic) environment compared to traffic noise only impacts behavioural, cognitive, affective, and physiological markers associated with attention restoration. Attention restoration will be examined as an aspect of cognitive fatigue.

Detailed description

Based on the Attention Restoration Theory (Kaplan, 1995), we hypothesize that listening to natural sounds has restorative effects on attention by supporting greater use of involuntary attention. This generates the prediction that exposure to natural sounds in the context of a noisy environment will have greater restorative effects on attention (i.e., physiological, affect, cognition, and behaviour) as compared to the control group (exposed to noise only). Individual differences (i.e., age, gender, caffeine and food intake, body mass index, skin temperature, noise sensitivity, sleep quality, baseline physiology and behavioural performance) will be examined and accounted for. A cognitive task will be administered at the beginning of the experiment to induce fatigue to examine the restorative effects of natural sounds.

Conditions

• Cognitive Fatigue
• Mental Fatigue
• Heart Rate Variability
• Skin Conductance
• Behavioral Performance
• Positive and Negative Affect
• Inhibition
• Working Memory
• Perceived Restoration

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Baseline	5-min urban park video clip (Presented on a TV)
OTHER	Fatigue Manipulation	20-min 2-back task (Presented on a computer)
OTHER	Traffic Sound	Active Comparator: Traffic Sound (Played through speakers)
OTHER	Traffic and Masking Sound	Experimental: Traffic and Masking Sound (Played through speakers)
OTHER	Silence	No Intervention: No sound (Played through speakers)

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-08-25
• Primary completion: 2023-05-15
• Completion: 2023-06-15
• First posted: 2021-08-18
• Last updated: 2023-03-23

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Singapore