Effects of noise on the cognitive performance of primary school children

Classroom acoustic environments often fail to meet standards, and noisy environments can not only affect children’s listening abilities but also lead to a decline in cognitive performance. This study examines how background noise influences primary school children’s cognitive processes. Children from two primary schools underwent testing in their classroom environments under both quiet and noisy conditions, with students performing neuropsychological tests to assess executive functions and learning tasks. Preliminary findings only partially support the hypothesis that noise negatively impacts cognitive performance. Noise was found to adversely affect children’s performance on attention tasks in the first school, whereas in the second school, children performed better in noise on both attention and inhibition tasks, as well as on a writing task. Unlike the first school, the second school had a reverberation time that did not meet regulatory standards. These initial findings suggest interesting hypotheses and directions for future research. However, they also reveal some weaknesses in the experimental protocol that need to be addressed to further investigate the emerging hypotheses.