Subjects were exposed to alternate conditions of quiet and noise (computer line printer noise at 100 dB,A‐weighted) while performing a demanding, rapidly paced, psychomotor task. Heart rate, peripheral pulse amplitude, and peripheral blood volume were monitored throughout four 8‐min test sessions. There appeared to be no increase in physiological stress or in errors in task performance during the noise as compared to the quiet test segments. An attempt is made to explain possible causes of differences between the results obtained in this study and those reported for a earlier, somewhat similar, study by Cohenetal. [’’Noise Effects, Arousal, and Human Information Processing Task Difficulty and Performance,’’ Department of Psychology and Industrial Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC (1973)].