Sex differences in the effects of noise and nightwork on performance efficiency

An experimental investigation of the combined effects of noise and nightwork revealed the following sex differences. Female subjects showed a large night-time impairment on a test of manual dexterity, but performed working memory tasks better at night than in the day. In contrast to this, male subjects showed a small impairment at night on both types of task. Other tasks, such as the simple reaction time task, were impaired at night for both sexes, and some tasks, such as the high memory load search task, showed no night-time impairment in males or females. There was no evidence of noise producing different effects in the two sexes, and few instances of sex differences in the size of post-meal impairments. Overall, these results show mat the effect of working at night depends on the nature of the task and also the sex of the person performing it.