Three experiments examine what is widely reported to be one of the mos
t common forms of interference in open-plan office environments-the ef
fect of background noise. Experiment 1 investigates whether office noi
se (with or without speech) is disruptive to two office-related tasks:
memory for prose and mental arithmetic. The results show that whereas
office noise with speech disrupts performance on both tasks, office n
oise without speech disrupts performance on the mental arithmetic task
only. Experiment 2 investigates the memory for prose task more closel
y by varying the duration and the meaning of the background noise. Exp
eriment 3 examines whether the meaning of speech is important to the d
isruption of a mental arithmetic task. The results show that both spee
ch and office noise can disrupt performance on memory for prose and me
ntal arithmetic tasks, and the effect is independent of the meaning of
the irrelevant speech. These results are presented and interpreted in
light of current research and theories regarding the effect of backgr
ound noise.