Some Effects of Noise on Human Behavior.
Clean studies show steady noise rarely hurts typical work, but later trials prove noise can punish or maintain escape behavior if a client is sound-sensitive.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Azrin (1958) read every lab paper he could find on noise and human performance. He kept only the studies that held other things constant. Then he wrote a short, plain-English summary of what was left.
What they found
When the lab kept the setup tight, loud noise did not hurt how fast or how well people worked. The old idea that noise wrecks performance fell apart under clean conditions.
How this fits with other research
CASSOTTA et al. (1964) ran a single-case test right after the review. They showed that a quick blast of noise can punish a response if the person has another, unpunished button to hit. The review said noise does not disrupt; the follow-up showed noise can control behavior when it is used as a consequence.
O'Reilly et al. (2000) and Kettering et al. (2018) moved from college labs to kids with sound sensitivity. Both found that background noise can maintain escape behavior. Earplugs or favorite music through headphones cut problem behavior fast. These studies do not clash with Azrin (1958); they just shift the question from "Does noise hurt typical performance?" to "Can noise act as an aversive stimulus we need to treat?"
Clopton (1972) stayed in the lab but switched to monkeys. The animals followed Weber’s law when they had to notice small jumps in noise. The thread is the same: noise as a controllable stimulus, not a general disrupter.
Why it matters
Stop blaming loud rooms for off-task behavior until you test the case. If your client tries to leave or cover their ears, treat noise as an aversive stimulus, not a vague distraction. Try headphones with preferred music or simple earplugs first. You may get big drops in problem behavior without any extinction procedure.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Past studies of the effects of high-intensity noise on man have presented a picture of conflicting results that are often contrary to expectations. Intuitively, we might expect intense noise to disrupt performance. However, Kryter (16), in an extensive review of the literature, concluded that intense noise does not affect performance and, further, that "nearly all industrial and laboratory experiments which report that noise adversely affects work output are open to criticism because of poor ex- perimentation and uncontrolled factors. (By 'work' is meant any mental, and motor tasks not involving communication by speech.) On the other hand, experiments carried out with proper control of all pertinent factors reveal that steady or ex- pected noises do not adversely affect psychomotor activity to any significant extent (p. 22)." Berrien (4), in an independent review of this same subject, similarly concludes that there have been few satisfactory studies "in spite of uncritical ac- ceptance of the assumption that noise because it is annoying must be harmful (p. 158).
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1958 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1958.1-183