| Abstract: | Sixty undergraduate males participated in an experiment with a 2 × 3 factorial design involving two levels of density and three levels of noise to demonstrate effects of the independent variables (density, noise) on cognitive task performance and affect. As predicted, it was found that crowding and noise lead to deterioration of subject's performance on cognitively complex tasks but not on simple (cognitive) task. Also, density and noise generated a negative feeling in the subjects. Significant two-way interaction for complex task, showed variation in performance of Ss of high and low density under low and high noise conditions. In addition, crowded-condition subjects reported more dissatisfaction about their performance and evaluated the presence of the experimenter as significantly less pleasant than their noncrowded-condition counterparts. |
