Abstract
The present study intended to investigate the effects of nocturnal railway noise on the three components of attention (alertness, orientation and executive control), and on subjective ratings of sleep quality, fatigue, wellbeing and discomfort. These effects were studied in young (mean age = 25.8 years) and middle aged (mean age = 52.4 years) subjects, for day and shift workers. Following a quiet night, a moderately noisy night (40 dBA) and a highly noisy night (50 BA), 38 subjects performed two 30-min cognitive tasks (Attention Network Test and Stroop task) and filled out a short questionnaire. Results show that nocturnal railway noise worsened subjective evaluations, mainly in terms of sleep quality and noise discomfort in a dose-dependent manner. Young subjects were more sensitive to the effects of noise than middle-aged subjects, as seen by the self-estimations of sleep quality and noise discomfort. Furthermore, the shift workers' ratings of sleep quality were independent of noise conditions. The effects on cognitive performance, however, were very weak. The only decrement observed the next morning was an increase in reaction time in the Stroop task after the moderately noisy night. We found no effect of noise on any of the three components of attention, suggesting that nocturnal railway noise, at least when experienced during a single night at these noise levels, is unlikely to produce marked effects on attentional mechanisms. The use of more sensitive indicators, such as blink rate or event-related brain potentials, could allow investigation of possible impairments of these attentional networks after noisy nights.
Published Version
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