Chronic noise and psychological stress

This article illustrates the value of incorporating psychological principles into the environmental sciences. Psycho-physiological, cognitive, motivational, and affective indices of stress were monitored among elementary school children chronically exposed to aircraft noise. We demonstrate for the first time that chronic noise exposure is associated with elevated neuroendocrine and cardiovascular measures, muted cardiovascular reactivity to a task presented under acute noise, deficits in a standardized reading test administered under quiet conditions, poorer long-term memory, and diminished quality of life on a standardized index. Children in high-noise areas also showed evidence of poor persistence on challenging tasks and habituation to auditory distraction on a signal-to-noise task. They reported considerable annoyance with community noise levels, as measured utilizing a calibration procedure that adjusts for individual differences in rating criteria for annoyance judgments.