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Evidence Base Home » Environmental Noise » Exposure to environmental noise is associated with delays in learning for children

Articles in Exposure to environmental noise is associated with delays in learning for children.

  • Children exposed to environmental noise (mostly aircraft) showed significant delays in reading. Long-term memory in children is adversely affected by noise exposure.

    Evans GW. 2006. Child development and the physical environment. Annual Review of Psychology 57:423-451.

  • Chronic road traffic or aircraft noise could impair cognitive development in children, such as reading comprehension, speech intelligibility, recognition memory, motivation, attention, problem solving, and performance on standardized tests. These types of chronic noise are also associated with increases in annoyance. However, children chronically exposed to road traffic noise showed increases in episodic memory (conceptual recall & information recall), and showed no change in sustained attention, self-reported health, or overall mental health.

    Stansfeld SA, Berglund, B, Clark C, Lopez-Barrio I, Fischer P, O?hrstro?m E, Haines MM, Head J, Hygge S, Kamp I, Berry BF, and RANCH study team. Aircraft and road traffic noise and children's cognition and health: a cross-national study. The Lancet, June 4-10, 2005, Vol. 365 (9475): 1942-49.

  • Noise exposure may also slow rehearsal in memory, influence processes of selectivity in memory, and choice of strategies for carrying out tasks.

    Stansfeld SA, Matheson MP. Noise pollution: non-auditory effects on health. 2003. British Medical Bulletin 68:243-257.

  • Chronic road noise can affect cognitive performance of children including attention span, concentration and remembering, poorer reading ability, and poorer discrimination between sounds.

    London Health Commission, 2003 Noise and Health: Making the Link Available: http://www.phel.gov.uk/hiadocs/noiseandhealth.pdf)

  • Exposure to uncontrollable noise may make children more vulnerable to learned helplessness.

    Evans, G.W. & Lepore, S.J., (1993). Nonauditory effects of noise on children: A critical review. Children's Environments, 10(1), pp.31-51.

  • Older children from quieter environments were better at discrimination tasks done under noisy conditions. Children from noisy environments learned to tune out auditory stimuli but in a nondiscriminatory way and tuned out important cues.

    Evans, G.W. & Maxwell, L., (1997). Chronic noise exposure and reading deficits: The mediating effects of language acquisition. Environment and Behavior, 29(5), pp.638-656.

  • There is a link between chronic noise exposure and reading. One study took place at a school where planes from a nearby airport flew over a school every 6 minutes resulting in classroom decibel levels of 90 dB(A). In this study children in the noisy school had poorer reading skills than children from the quiet school.

    Evans, G.W. & Maxwell, L., (1997). Chronic noise exposure and reading deficits: The mediating effects of language acquisition. Environment and Behavior, 29(5), pp.638-656.