Effects of Difference in Listening Tempo on Task Performers

Abstract

When performing a task with a set time limit, the performer may make numerous errors due to impatience and haste. By contrast, a moderate mental load caused by a time limit improves the time-to-performance ratio. Time pressure (TP) refers to the mental strain imposed by the time limit to the performer. Despite numerous studies on the effects of TP on task performers, no consistent findings regarding the relationship between TP and the method of presenting and communicating time have been obtained. There are various methods to make task performers aware of time; each method of presentation and communication may have a psychological impact on task performers. The objective of this study was to clarify the effects of the method of presenting the time remaining to perform a task on mental load and concentration in a time-limited task and to compare the influences between presentation conditions using biometric measurements and a subjective evaluation questionnaire.The experiment evaluated these effects on task performers in terms of fingertip volume pulse wave and stress sweating.The task was a continuous addition task modeled after the Uchida–Kleppelin test that lasted 5 minutes. Five Japanese male university students (21.8±0.8 years old) were each tested on four different conditions. The conditions were as follows: no time presentation, visual time presentation, alarm every 30 seconds, and both visual and alarm presentation.The LF/HF was used to evaluate finger volume pulse waves, and galvanic skin response (GSR) was used to assess mental arousal. GSR analysis in each presentation condition revealed that GSR in the no time presentation condition was higher than in the other three conditions, with some variation. Previous studies have suggested that the greater the awareness of the remaining time, the more likely participants were to feel anxious. Therefore, GSR was assumed to be higher in the no time presentation condition because the task performers were more actively aware of the time remaining than in the other conditions. The results suggest that the TP may be higher in the no time presentation condition than in the condition with time presentation. In addition to the presentation method used in this experiment, there are other methods of time presentation, such as second-hand or metronome sound. In these methods, the frequency of the time information presentation can be controlled by adjusting the Beats Per Minutes (BPM). In a study in which computation tasks were performed while listening to music and task performance was compared based on the type of music and BPM, it was shown that task performance varied depending on the type of music and BPM. Therefore, we conducted an experiment using a metronome, which is not affected by the type of music, to evaluate the effect of BPM differences on task performers. By changing the frequency of time information presentation, we expect to control psychological effects such as impatience and anxiety by intentionally adjusting the opportunity for task performers to be aware of time.