WORK PERFORMANCE WITH MUSIC: INSTRUMENTATION AND FREQUENCY RESPONSE

Abstract

This experiment tested whether music's instrumentation affects response times on a vigilance task. Instrumentation was varied by restricting the frequency range, thus eliminating many of the overtones that determine timbre. Forty-one subjects worked at the task for one hour while listening to a program of 23 selections, alternately wide-range and filtered. The subjects showed significantly better alertness during the side-range condition throughout the hour. The filtered condition gave slower responses, greater variability, and inferior individual consistency. Hence the music's instrumentation had several significant effects on alertness. In addition, the more-stimulating musical program here appeared responsible for faster responses and lower variabilty than in the preceding experiment.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 01, 1968
Accession Number
AD0675480

Entities

People

  • William Wokoun

Organizations

  • United States Army Materiel Command

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber
  • Human Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Army
  • Assembly Lines
  • Consistency
  • Engineering
  • Filters
  • Frequency
  • Frequency Response
  • Harmonics
  • Human Factors Engineering
  • Instructions
  • Instrumentation
  • Magnetic Tape
  • Military Police
  • Reliability
  • Sine Waves
  • Situational Awareness
  • Tapes

Fields of Study

  • Psychology

Readers

  • Aerospace Test and Evaluation
  • Brain and Cognitive Science; Experimental Psychology; Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Speech Processing/Speech Recognition.