INTRODUCTION
visual and auditory, worry, anxiety
STRESSFUL EVENTS
Students face many challenges throughout their academic careers, such as examinations, harsh course content, and relations with teachers. The learning environment, which includes various dimensions such as the school buildings themselves, classrooms, the materials used for instruction, and interactions between students and teachers, can also be another severe challenge for students and might impact several variables. Previous research documented that the learning environment might affect certain outcome variables such as self‐efficacy (Dorman, Due to technological developments, traditional components of learning environments have started to evolve. In this respect, most students have smart devices that can considerably alter audio and audiovisual stimuli extant in their learning environment (Dixit et al., The ANS controls many of the body's involuntary functions, including heart rate (HR), blood pressure, digestion, breathing, sexual arousal, papilla reflex, and stress responses (Gibbons, Due to the probable impact of background music on ANS, individuals could choose to listen to music while studying. Despite the popularity of pop music among people of different ages and nationalities while studying (Kotsopoulou & Hallam, Background television may be the other most common way to create a learning environment used by students. Moreover, today almost every individual has access to smart devices that can act similar to television, such as digital video streaming platforms. More importantly, during the Covid‐19 lockdown period, the use of smart devices and televisions increased dramatically, especially in Western societies. Television broadcasts may transmit both visual and auditory information; hence, they may significantly impact students' autonomic responses. Moreover, the messages sent by a television broadcast include specific structural elements such as luminance, slow motion, cuts, animation, and music (Lang, In addition to the limited capacity approach mentioned earlier, the orienting response may be another valuable theoretical framework that can explain whether a learning environment's background sound characteristics may lead to variation in psychophysiological activity. The term orienting response describes the automatic allocation of information processing resources to the television program as a novel or exciting stimulus (Pool et al., It is widely recognized that cognitive workload affects the variability of autonomic activity. However, relying solely on one ANS marker may not provide sufficient insight into this connection. To gain a better understanding of the correlation between cognitive workload and ANS activity, it is best to measure several psychophysiological biomarkers that can indicate the performance of both the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of ANS. In this regard, previous research provided evidence for the idea that heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), blood volume pulse amplitude (BVA), and skin conductance level (SCL) might reflect changes in ANS activity stemming from the cognitive workload, stressful events, anxiety, and worry (Critchley, HRV is one of the noninvasive electrocardiographic (ECG) parameters that reflects the autonomic control of the heart (Heffernan et al., Another noninvasive indicator of the autonomic activity implemented in the present study is the blood volume pulse (BVP). BVP is considered a parameter that can reflect a peripheral pulse waveform converted to blood volume pulse amplitude (BVA) (Lin et al., SCL is another widely used marker of the sympathetic branch of the ANS. SCL reflects only sympathetic activity. SCL refers to the variation of the electrical properties of the skin in response to sweat secretion (Benedek & Kaernbach, In the present study, we aimed to explore the effect of background TV, classical music, and silence on students' autonomic responses, represented by HR, HRV, BVA, and SCL before, during, and after an experimental academic examination. To the best of our knowledge, no previous study tested whether learning environments with differing audio and audiovisual stimuli may lead to a variation in autonomic activity. Also, the present study implemented several standard psychophysiological biomarkers recorded from different anatomical regions (peripheral measures of the ANS). Therefore, the present study's results can provide an opportunity to better understand students' autonomic responses during a demanding academic task in the presence of differing audio and audiovisual stimuli.In light of the theoretical explanations and research findings cited above, we predicted that the learning environment with background TV should increase HR. We also predicted that background TV reduces BVA and increases SCL levels. We further hypothesized that silence and background classical music do not affect individuals' HR, HRV, BVA, and SCL. In other words, classical music should act like silence during the mental task. We specifically reached this hypothesis due to above‐cited references showing the inconsistencies concerning the classical music's effect on ANS and mental performance. We also postulated that changes in HR, HRV, BVA, and SCL during the anticipation, challenge, and recovery should be greater in the background TV group.