Efeito de diferentes paisagens sonoras em tarefas cognitivas aplicadas à estudantes da Universidade Federal do Pará

Abstract

The sounds are in our daily lives and interferes a lot in our daily activities and our behavior. They can give us positive or negative effects due to their physical qualities and the context in which we operate. According to the World Health Organization, the urban noise is the main source of damage to hearing of world's population and can interfere in very important practices for execution of activities involving an effort of attention, such as when reading a book or even in the process of learning. The objective of this study was to quantify the influence of three soundscapes in performing a cognitive activity. Then we proposed an experiment in which participants were submitted to a sound environment, here classified as urban, rural or silent while performing a memory test of symbols. The results showed that the effects of urban and rural sounds do not influence positively or negatively significantly the performance of students in this type of task in comparison to silent soundscape. However, it still needs further long-term studies to assess the possible cognitive effects of exposure to these soundscapes.