The effect of background audio and audiovisual stimuli on students' autonomic responses during and after an experimental academic examination

BACKGROUND: Due to the Covid‐19 pandemic lockdown during the online‐distant education period, certain students tended to combine their courses and homework with TV or social media news or other media content, such as classical music, including a wealth of audio and audiovisual stimuli. As the audio and audiovisual stimuli existing in a learning environment may affect students' autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses negatively, the present study aimed to monitor the impact of background TV, classical music, and silence on students' ANS activity represented by heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), blood volume amplitude (BVA), and skin conductance level (SCL) during and after an experimental academic examination. METHOD: Seventy‐six students were randomly allocated to background TV, classical music, or silence groups. The experiment with repeated measures design consisted of four consecutive periods: baseline, anticipation, challenge, and recovery, lasting 4 min each. RESULTS: Within‐subject analyses indicated significant HRV decrement only in the background TV group. Regardless of the experimental groups, HR and SCL increased while BVA decreased during the task. In addition, the between‐subject analysis showed that the background TV group experienced significantly larger changes in HR and HRV parameters compared to the other experimental groups relative to their respective baseline measurements. CONCLUSIONS: Based on these results, we concluded that relative to classical music and silence, background TV, including audiovisual and verbal stimuli, extant in a learning environment might raise students' sympathetic activity. Further, classical music, without lyrics, may suppress the withdrawal of vagal activity and elevate the autonomic regulation capacity during the academic reading comprehension task. HRV is a more valid and reliable indicator of students' autonomic responses during a challenging academic task.