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

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 i...

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Main Authors: Ahmad Dahari, Munirah, Mohd Mahudin, Nor Diana
Format: Proceeding Paper
Language:English
Published: Asian Scholars Network 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:http://irep.iium.edu.my/78316/
http://irep.iium.edu.my/78316/1/78316_A%20Descriptive%20Study%20Of%20Nature%20Sound.pdf
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author Ahmad Dahari, Munirah
Mohd Mahudin, Nor Diana
author_facet Ahmad Dahari, Munirah
Mohd Mahudin, Nor Diana
author_sort Ahmad Dahari, Munirah
building IIUM Repository
collection Online Access
description 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.
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format Proceeding Paper
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institution International Islamic University Malaysia
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publishDate 2019
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spelling iium-783162020-07-10T07:55:07Z http://irep.iium.edu.my/78316/ A descriptive study of nature sound In open-plan office on cognitive performance of employees Ahmad Dahari, Munirah Mohd Mahudin, Nor Diana BF180 Experimental psychology BF636 Applied psychology TA365 Acoustics in engineering. Acoustical engineering 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. Asian Scholars Network 2019-12-31 Proceeding Paper PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://irep.iium.edu.my/78316/1/78316_A%20Descriptive%20Study%20Of%20Nature%20Sound.pdf 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. https://submit.confbay.com/conf/limac2019
spellingShingle BF180 Experimental psychology
BF636 Applied psychology
TA365 Acoustics in engineering. Acoustical engineering
Ahmad Dahari, Munirah
Mohd Mahudin, Nor Diana
A descriptive study of nature sound In open-plan office on cognitive performance of employees
title A descriptive study of nature sound In open-plan office on cognitive performance of employees
title_full A descriptive study of nature sound In open-plan office on cognitive performance of employees
title_fullStr A descriptive study of nature sound In open-plan office on cognitive performance of employees
title_full_unstemmed A descriptive study of nature sound In open-plan office on cognitive performance of employees
title_short A descriptive study of nature sound In open-plan office on cognitive performance of employees
title_sort descriptive study of nature sound in open-plan office on cognitive performance of employees
topic BF180 Experimental psychology
BF636 Applied psychology
TA365 Acoustics in engineering. Acoustical engineering
url http://irep.iium.edu.my/78316/
http://irep.iium.edu.my/78316/
http://irep.iium.edu.my/78316/1/78316_A%20Descriptive%20Study%20Of%20Nature%20Sound.pdf