How does classroom noise affect children’s listening?

Details

The study examined how noise type, age and gender affect children’s speech intelligibility (SI) and sentence comprehension (SC). The experiment involved 171 children aged 11 to 13, tested collectively in real, reverberating classrooms under ecologically valid conditions. Researchers used two standardized tests to assess SI and SC. Both tasks were presented in three listening conditions: quiet, traffic noise and classroom noise. The classroom noise combined unintelligible noise with the same spectrum and temporal envelope as speech and typical classroom sound events. The analysis considered task accuracy and listening effort, tracking the latter through response time (RT) recorded using a single-task paradigm.

Classroom noise had the worst effect on both tasks, reducing accuracy and slowing responses, which the researchers attributed to its spectro-temporal characteristics. A developmental effect was observed across ages 11 to 13, depending on the task and listening condition. Gender effects also appeared in both tasks: girls were more accurate and quicker to respond in most listening conditions. A significant interaction between noise type, age and task indicated that classroom noise had a greater impact on RTs for SI than for SC.

Overall, the results indicate that SI and SC performance in 11- to 13-year-olds is influenced by both the sound environment and listener characteristics, including age and gender. Significant interactions between these factors and task type suggest that acoustic conditions ensuring optimal SI may not be equally adequate for SC. The findings have implications for developing standard requirements for classroom acoustic design.