Combined Effects Of Indoor Temperature And Noise On Human Performance Combined Effects Of Indoor Temperature And Noise On Human Performance

Modern people’s about80%-90%of their time is spent in indoors. Especially for theasia-pacific region, worker often work overtime and stay longer in the office every daybecause of the huge competition intense and life pressure. So the indoor environmentalquality has a special significance to the health, comfort and work efficiency of modern people.Indoor temperature and noise have the biggest impact of the indoor environment factors. Thepurpose of this study is to research the effects of temperature and noise to work efficiency,and create healthy, comfortable and efficient indoor environment on temperature and noise byempirical research.This research adopts the method which combined the task performance index,physiological index and subjective evaluation, studied the influence of the temperature, noisetype and intensity on work efficiency. Performance tasks include two cognitive tests (thestroop colour word interference test, meaningless graphics recognition test) and a simulatedoffice task (digital inspection task). Physiological indexes include galvanic skin responselevel and heart rate variability index of RR–I. Subjective evaluation include thermal comfortevaluation, healthy and comfortable evaluation and self-evaluation of working efficiency.This study includes three laboratory experiments: Experiment1studied the influence oftemperature (17℃,22℃,29℃,32℃); Experiment2studied noise type (language noise, trafficnoise, office noise) and noise intensity (50db,70db), as well as quiet environment impact onthe work efficiency under the condition of normal temperature (27℃-28℃); Experiment3studied noise type (language noise, traffic noise, office noise) and noise intensity (50db,70db), as well as quiet environment impact on the work efficiency under the condition of hightemperature (32℃).The above experiments’ conclusions show following:(1) The temperature has a significant effect on the efficiency, and this effect is related to tasktype. When temperature is22℃, the efficiency is highest, and then17℃.32℃and29℃have lower efficiency. When the temperature is above29℃, cognitive tasks performancehave declined obviously, while simulated office task has no obvious effect. Physical galvanicskin response and heart rate variability also have obvious change, and subjective feeling occurobvious discomfort such as mouth dry, difficulty concentrating, fatigue. And there are somedifferences in physiological indexes and subjective feeling between men and women.(2) The type and intensity of noise for all types of tasks the efficiency are not significantunder the condition of normal temperature. Only physiological indexes and subjectiveevaluation have gender differences.(3)The type of noise has a significant influence on cognitive test efficiency under thecondition of high temperature, while has no significant effect of simulated office tasks. For alltypes of task, noise intensity has no significant influence of the work efficiency. Under the condition of high temperature, office noise compared to traffic noise and language noise,significantly increases the correct response time in the stroop colour word interference test,and reduces the accuracy of meaningless graphics recognition test. Under the condition ofhigh temperature, noise type also affects the physiological indexes and subjective feeling.Office noise had the greatest influence on the efficiency of the work.