MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit

In the postwar era facilities at Chaucer Road included special purpose facilities for studying how people reacted when asked to perform tasks in noisy and hot environments.

The picture below shows military personnel carrying out tasks in a hot room.

Example studies from the 1940's and 1970's:

Effects of heat and high humidity on pursuitmeter scores (Mackworth, 1945)

The effects of heat on wireless telegraphy operators hearing and recording morse messages (Mackworth, 1946)

The interaction of the loss of a nights sleep with mild heat: Task variables (Poulton, Edwards & Colqhoun, 1974)

Performance after heat - disturbed sleep (Herbert, 1975)

Our Hot Room was dismantled in the 1970's.

Research on the effects of noisy backgrounds were a prominent focus of research at APU throughout the 1950's, 60's and 70's.

The detrimental effects of noise were studied on human performance in a wide range of practical and intellectual tasks, such as attention, vigilance, memory and language comprehension. Specific effects of noisy backgrounds on the speech perception were a particular interest. The emotional side-effects of noise were not ignored. One study in the early 1960's examined subjective measurements of relative annoyance of simulated sonic bangs and aircraft noises.

Major reports on the effects of noise in the home environment were also prepared for the Buildings Research Establishment and for the Commission of the European Community.

As indicated by this quote from one of our former directors reflects APU's core approach of synergies between theory and application:

'The effects of noise seem to the writer to be of importance for any theoretical account of the working of the nervous system. Equally they are of practical importance, and their study gives a promising opportunity for the interplay of theoretical and applied research. Neither sound theories nor valuable facts, however, can be obtained without careful weighing of the evidence. Donald Broadbent, August 1955, Writing in The Royal Society of Health Journal on "Noise: Its effects on Behaviour".