Individual differences in children’s cognitive performance in noise

The effects of noise on children’s classroom performance have been investigated primarily in terms of listening effort. However, several learning activities in classrooms do not involve listening. Learning activities require attentional resources, the ability to control for interferences, and verbal working memory. The study explored how these cognitive abilities are influenced by background babble noise, and if individual factors, like having or not attentional problems associated to a learning disability (LD) or attention- deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), can modulate the effects of noise on children’s cognitive performance. Fifty-eight typically developing children and 13, 8 to12 years-old, children with either attentional problems associated to LDs or ADHD (n=10) or performance 2 SD below the mean on standardized attention tests (n=3) completed two visual attention tasks, a cognitive inhibition, and a verbal digit span task in quiet and 65dB babble noise. Significant differences between groups were found on both visual attention tasks and the digit span task in quiet, but not in noise. The visual attention performance of the LD/ADHD group improved significantly in noise, whereas the performance on the digit span task declined slightly. These results suggest a facilitative effect of babble noise for the children with attention problems, though limited to non-verbal tasks.