The study of relationships between positive and negative environmental sounds which affect state anxiety and emotional-attention processing.

Previous studies suggest that environmental sounds, positive and negative environmental sounds are sounds that reduce and extend anxiety levels, affect state anxiety. Additionally, state anxiety levels can influence emotional-attention processing. However, there have not been any studies on environmental sounds that involve emotional-attention processing. Therefore, the objective of this research is to study the relationships between positive and negative environmental sounds which affect state anxiety and emotional-attention processing. During the experiment, participants had to do the Flanker task together with listening to positive sound, water flowing sound, and negative sound, traffic noise. Participants were randomized into two groups—listening to positive before negative environmental sound (n = 15) and listening to negative before positive environmental sound (n = 15). Moreover, the subjective anxiety level was evaluated by using The Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale-21 Items (DASS-21) and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). The results showed that positive and negative environmental sounds can significantly decrease and increase anxiety levels (p < .01), respectively. However, data from the Flanker task revealed no differences in emotional-attention effect elicited from positive versus negative sounds, suggesting that the use of auditory stimuli was insufficient in inducing attention broadening or narrowing. Future research should examine using auditory attention tasks to investigate the effect of auditory stimuli on emotional-attention processing.

This project was supported by Science Classroom in University Affiliated School (SCiUS) under King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Neuroscience Center for Research and Innovation, Learning Institute, and Darunsikkhalai Science School. The funding of SCiUS is provided by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation.