EFFECTS OF NOISE

Published in Child Development, July 21, 2016 Brianna T M Mcmillan and Jenny R Safran

AUTHORS:

group of 40 toddlers (28-30 months) was tested to determine whether somewhat older children could better overcome the effects of background noise. Again, only when background noise was quieter could the older toddlers successfully learn the new words.

In the third experiment, 26 older toddlers were first exposed to two-word labels in a quiet environment, and then taught the meanings of four word labels -- two they had just heard and two new ones -- in the same noisy environment that impaired learning in the second experiment.

The children learned the new words and their meanings only when they had first heard the labels in a quiet environment, suggesting that experience with the sounds of the words without distracting background noise helps them subsequently map those sounds to meaning, the researchers said. PTI