Moderately cold indoor temperatures’ effect on human attention:Immediate decrease in inhibiting erroneous responses

Abstract: The aim of the study was to investigate whether a moderately cold indoor temperature, 15.5+- °C, has a negative effect on human attention. This was investigated in an experiment where 40 participants (18 women, M = 23.5 years, age range 20–33 years) partook in three commonly used attention demanding cognitive tests, where half of the participants were tested in a normal room temperature environment around 20+-1 °C and the remaining participants in a cooler temperature of 15.5+-2 °C. The three tests that were used were the Stroop Test, Trail Making Test A and B as well as the Dot Cancellation Test. The results from the study suggest that attention is significantly affected in tests where rapid, correct responses are demanded, since the lower indoor temperature in particular significantly affected the performance in the Stroop Test. This effect is suggested to originate from a performance decrease when inhibiting erroneous responses. Additional to this it is interesting to observe that the test time was short, 15-20 minutes in the test environment, thus the effect has been shown to affect rather immediately, during a short time period.