Different Effects of Sound Stimuli on Performing Left-and Right-Hemispheric Tasks

In order to examine the different effects of noise and music on mental tasks, an addition of figures as a left-hemispheric task and a pattern search as a right-hemispheric task were given to elementary school pupils under conditions of jet noise stimulus, music stimulus, and no-sound stimulus, respectively. Results showed that effects of music and noise stimuli during these tasks were significantly different. The subjects under music stimulus tended, when performing additions, to show occasional short periods in which they produced substantially less than their own average rate of work. This is due to interaction between calculation and hearing music in the left hemisphere, whereas there was no detrimental effects on the task of addition under noise stimulus as well as no-sound stimulus because the addition and the noise may be separately processed in different cerebral hemispheres. As effects of noise on performing search task, the subjects tended to show instantaneous agitations in their working curves. Since noise with no-meaning is processed in the right hemisphere, it may be explained as an interacting effect in this hemisphere.