Background Noise Degrades Central Auditory Processing in Toddlers

Niemitalo-Haapola, Elina; Haapala, Sini; Jansson-Verkasalo, Eira; Kujala, Teija

doi:10.1097/aud.0000000000000192

Cited by 16 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 58 publications

(88 reference statements)

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“…In this setting, symptoms associated with noise include headache, exhaustion, burnout, stress, voice problems, hearing difficulties and tinnitus [4, 7–12]. In environments with continuous background noise, small children are even at risk of disturbances in speech development [13]. A study with preschool children has shown that children who are exposed to a higher level of noise are more likely to have problems in learning to read [14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of moulded hearing protectors by child care workers - an interventional pilot study

Koch

Stranzinger

Kersten

et al. 2016

J Occup Med Toxicol

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BackgroundEmployees of a multi-site institution for children and adolescents started to wear moulded hearing protectors (MHPs) during working hours, as they were suffering from a high level of noise exposure. It was agreed with the institutional physician and the German Institution for Statutory Accident Insurance and Prevention in the Health and Welfare Services (BGW) that this presented an opportunity to perform a scientific study to investigate potential beneficial effects on risk of burnout and subjective noise exposure at work when child care workers wear MHPs.MethodsThis was an intervention study which compared the initial values with those after a follow-up of 12 months. All teaching child care workers employed by the multi-site institution were offered the opportunity to take part. Forty-five (45) employees in 16 institutions participated. The subjects were provided with personally adapted MHPs and documented the periods of wear in a diary. At the start and end of the intervention, the subjects had to answer a questionnaire related to subjective noise exposure and burnout risk. In parallel, employees were surveyed who had not taken part in the intervention.ResultsThirty-three (33) subjects took part in the follow-up after 12 months (follow-up rate 73 %). The median period of wear of MHPs was 34.6 h. During the period of observation, the mean subjective noise exposure increased by 2.7 %, and mean burnout risk by 2.5 scale points (baseline: 55.2, follow-up 57.7). Neither difference was statistically significant. 67 % of the participants reported that they were still capable of fulfilling their teaching duties when wearing the MHPs. In the reference group without the intervention, the increase in burnout risk was 3.9 points, which was even less favourable (baseline: 50.6, follow-up: 54.5).ConclusionsWithin the working environment of the child care workers, wearing MHPs did not reduce subjective noise exposure or burnout risk; the satisfaction of the study subjects with wearing MHPs decreased over time. There were however signs that the level of stress increased over time and that this might have been alleviated in the intervention group by wearing MHPs.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Use of moulded hearing protectors by child care workers - an interventional pilot study

Koch

Stranzinger

Kersten

et al. 2016

J Occup Med Toxicol

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“…In recent years, the multifeature paradigm has been successfully adopted for obtaining neurophysiological measures of auditory discrimination in special populations, such as cochlear implantees2728, depressed patients29, patients with panic disorder30 and individuals with different skills in music313233. Moreover, the linguistic multifeature paradigm is increasingly used in speech perception research and shown to be efficient in recording auditory discrimination profiles even in toddlers34.…”

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confidence: 99%

A window into the brain mechanisms associated with noise sensitivity

Kliuchko

Heinonen-Guzejev

Vuust

et al. 2016

Sci Rep

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Noise sensitive individuals are more likely to experience negative emotions from unwanted sounds and they show greater susceptibility to adverse effects of noise on health. Noise sensitivity does not originate from dysfunctions of the peripheral auditory system, and it is thus far unknown whether and how it relates to abnormalities of auditory processing in the central nervous system. We conducted a combined electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography (M/EEG) study to measure neural sound feature processing in the central auditory system in relation to the individual noise sensitivity. Our results show that high noise sensitivity is associated with altered sound feature encoding and attenuated discrimination of sound noisiness in the auditory cortex. This finding makes a step towards objective measures of noise sensitivity instead of self-evaluation questionnaires and the development of strategies to prevent negative effects of noise on the susceptible population.

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“…Our previous study suggested that background noise influences CAP of 2-year-old children in several ways (Niemitalo-Haapola, Haapala, Jansson-Verkasalo, & Kujala, 2015). We found that the P1 amplitude decreased and the N2 amplitude increased during noise.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 47%

“…The participants of this follow-up study were 14 children (six girls, eight boys) who were studied twice, at the age of 2 and 4 years. The participants are a sub-group from the studies reporting the eligibility of the multi-feature paradigm in investigating CAP (Niemitalo-Haapola et al, 2013) and the effects of background noise on CAP at the age of 2 years (Niemitalo-Haapola et al, 2015).…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%