Tageducation(11)

ARLINE L. BRONZAFT is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Herbert H. Lehman College of the City University of New York. Professor Bronzaft is a member of the Governor’s Energy Task Force of New York and the Chairman of the Mayor’s Subway Service Watchdog Commission of New York City. Her major interest is the harmful effects of subway noise and subway travel on mental health. DENNIS P. McCARTHY is a member of the Environmental Psychology Program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His par- ticular interests are environmental stressors in urban living, and he is presently investigating the effects of high-rise dwelling on low-income families. Early laboratory work (Kryter, 1950, 1970; Broadbent, 1957) had found no compelling support for direct effects of noise on mental and psychomotor performance, and it was concluded that people seem to adapt to noise (Kryter, 1970). However, G lass and Singer (1972a), through an extensive survey of previous noise research and their own studies on noise adapta- tion, found that, following exposure to unpredictable and uncontrollable high-intensity noise, the often reported after- effects were: degradation in quality of task performance, lowered frustration tolerance, and impaired ability to resolve cogn itive conflict. Most recently, in a study on the effect of noise in a natural environment, Cohen et al. (1973) found that elementary school children living on the lower floors of buildings, directly exposed - to high-intensity expressway noise, showed greater impairment Environment and Behavior, Vol. 7 No. 4, December 1975…