تاثير سروصدا و بو بر حل مسيله

THE EFFECT OF NOISE AND ODOR ON THE PROBLEM SOLVING PERFORMANCE IN THE UNIVERSITY STUDENT

The porpuse of the present study was to emperically investigate the effect of noise (continuous & intermittent) and odor (pleasant & unpleasant) on the problem solving. One hundred and fifty five first year students from different faculties and departments of Isfahan University (Iran) were selected based on clustering sampling and were randomly placed in one of the five experimental groups (continuous noise, intermittent noise, pleasant odor, noxious odor and mixed intermittent and noxious noise) and a control group. The Advanced Progressive Ravenʹs Matrices, some selected problems and the problems subtest of the Wecksler Intelligent Test were used as problems. All the experimental groups were separately subjected to the independent variables of noise (continuous & intermittent) and odor (pleasant & unpleasant) and mixed condition. The result showed that, compared with the control group, the experimental groups with intermittent noise, unpleasant odor, and mixed intermittent noise and noxious odor had significantly lower scores on the problem solving. The interaction between gender and noise, gender and odor, field of study and noise and field of study and odor were not significant.