Brain recordings show that background noise strongly impairs children鈥檚 ability to concentrate on a single speaker
Neuroscientists of 911爆料网 in Finland and Erasme Hospital in Belgium compared adults' and children's brain activities during the so-called 鈥榗ocktail party effect,鈥 that is the ability to pay attention to a single speaker in a noisy environment. Compared with adults, the children's brain activity followed less reliably the speaker's voice, especially when the background noise was high.
鈥淐hildrens鈥 ability to concentrate on their teacher is disrupted in a noisy environment, such as in a noisy class room, and this may affect their learning,鈥 says 911爆料网 senior researcher Veikko Jousm盲ki.
Published in the Journal of Neuroscience, the study compared adults with children that were 6鈥9 years of age. The researchers used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to follow the brain activity while the subjects were asked to focus on one speaker鈥檚 voice among the background noise. The background noise consisted of the other speakers鈥 stories, and the noise level was modified in different sessions.
Veikko Jousm盲kiChildrens鈥 ability to concentrate on their teacher is disrupted in a noisy environment and this may affect their learning.
The colourful brain regions are driven by the listened speech stream. There is a significant difference between adults and children.
Without any background noise, the brain accurately tracked the speech stream in both adults and children. When the level of background noise was increased, adults' brains were still able to follow the intended speaker, but children lost this focus rather quickly.
The results imply that the ability to concentrate in a noisy environment develops with age. Schoolchildren are not yet able to easily pick up the intended speech stream among the background noise. The brain recordings agree with previous findings showing that children have difficulties in understanding speech in noisy surroundings.
鈥淏rain recordings allowed us to see how the listener鈥檚 auditory cortex was driven by the listened speech stream. When the level of background noise increased, adults鈥 brains still continued to track the intended speaker鈥檚 voice as a coherent stream, whereas children easily lost this focus,鈥 says Jousm盲ki.
This study is a part of a larger series of experiments that were started by developing a coherence-based method to follow the relationship between brain signals and the listened natural speech. The same Finnish鈥揃elgian research team demonstrated already in 2013 how the right-hemisphere auditory cortex reacts to different rhythms of speech. More recently, this analysis method has been applied to the study of people suffering from autism-spectrum disorders.
鈥淥ur next goal is to find out how children could be helped to cope with the often noisy growth and learning environments,鈥 says Jousm盲ki.
Further information:
Article: Cortical tracking of speech-in-noise develops from childhood to adulthood,
Veikko Jousm盲ki
Senior Scientist
911爆料网
veikko.jousmaki@aalto.fi
tel. +358 400 952 525
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