A descriptive study of nature sound In open-plan office on cognitive performance of employees

Ahmad Dahari, Munirah and Mohd Mahudin, Nor Diana (2019) A descriptive study of nature sound In open-plan office on cognitive performance of employees. In: Langkawi International Multidisciplinary Academic Conference (LIMAC 2019), 21 Dec 2019, Pulau Langkawi.

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Abstract

Despite being the preferred office setting especially for organizations with a huge number of employees, the open-plan office brings together with it a number of drawbacks. Acoustical distraction as one of the unresolved issues in open-plan office settings requires further intervention to minimize its negative effect, especially to the employees' performance. The study intended to mask the existing noise in the office by including nature sounds in such settings to see the impact on employees' cognitive performance. A quasi-experiment was conducted to fifty (50) administrative employees (female, n = 35, male, n = 15) in which they were exposed to four types of sound (i.e.: biophony nature sound, machine-generated noise, geophony nature sound, and human-generated noise) accordingly in their office for one week for each sound, followed by an error detection task at the end of every week. The descriptive analysis indicated that biophony sound has a positive impact on employees' cognitive performance (M = 9.48, SD = 0.65), while human-generated noise decreases such performance significantly with (M = 5.66, SD = 2.47). The study contributed to vast implications and recommendations for future research. To conclude, nature sounds subsidized to one's cognitive performance while noise coming from humans reduced such performance.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Plenary Papers)
Additional Information:	3951/78316
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Nature Sound, Open-Plan Office, Cognitive Performance, Employees
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology > BF180 Experimental psychology B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology > BF636 Applied psychology T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General) > TA365 Acoustics in engineering. Acoustical engineering
Kulliyyahs/Centres/Divisions/Institutes (Can select more than one option. Press CONTROL button):	Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences > Department of Psychology
Depositing User:	Nor Diana Mohd Mahudin
Date Deposited:	18 Feb 2020 14:45
Last Modified:	10 Jul 2020 15:55
URI:	http://irep.iium.edu.my/id/eprint/78316

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