Different Effects of Adding White Noise on Cognitive Performance of Sub-, Normal and Super-Attentive School Children

Helps, Suzannah K.; Bamford, Susan; Sonuga‐Barke, Edmund; Söderlund, Göran

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0112768

Cited by 67 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Second, previous investigations suggest that the addition of background noise can differentially influence cognitive performance of school-age children, depending on whether or not the child is attentive (Helps, Bamford, Sonuga-Barke, & Söderlund, 2014;Söderlund, Sikström, Loftesnes, & Sonuga-Barke, 2010). For example, Söderlund et al (2010) evaluated the effect of adding 78 dB background noise on children's verbal recall performance and found that performance improved with background noise for inattentive children, but decreased the performance of attentive children.…”

Section: Secondary Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Child–Adult Differences in Using Dual-Task Paradigms to Measure Listening Effort

2017

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Purpose: The purpose of the project was to investigate the effects modifying the secondary task in a dual-task paradigm to measure objective listening effort. To be specific, the complexity and depth of processing were increased relative to a simple secondary task. Method: Three dual-task paradigms were developed for school-age children. The primary task was word recognition. The secondary task was a physical response to a visual probe (simple task), a physical response to a complex probe (increased complexity), or word categorization (increased depth of processing). Sixteen adults (22-32 years, M = 25.4) and 22 children (9-17 years, M = 13.2) were tested using the 3 paradigms in quiet and noise.Results: For both groups, manipulations of the secondary task did not affect word recognition performance. For adults, increasing depth of processing increased the calculated effect of noise; however, for children, results with the deep secondary task were the least stable. Conclusions: Manipulations of the secondary task differentially affected adults and children. Consistent with previous findings, increased depth of processing enhanced paradigm sensitivity for adults. However, younger participants were more likely to demonstrate the expected effects of noise on listening effort using a secondary task that did not require deep processing.

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Section: Secondary Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Child–Adult Differences in Using Dual-Task Paradigms to Measure Listening Effort

2017

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“…For instance, in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), listening to white noise has been shown to improve performance on memory 4 and go/no-go tasks 5 , as well as improve speech recognition thresholds 6 . White noise has also been shown to improve cognitive performance in typically developing school children rated as inattentive by their teachers, and worsen performance in those rated as attentive or highly attentive 7,8 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

White noise enhances new-word learning in healthy adults

Angwin

Wilson

Arnott

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

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Research suggests that listening to white noise may improve some aspects of cognitive performance in individuals with lower attention. This study investigated the impact of white noise on new word learning in healthy young adults, and whether this effect was mediated by executive attention skills. Eighty participants completed a single training session to learn the names of twenty novel objects. The session comprised 5 learning phases, each followed by a recall test. A final recognition test was also administered. Half the participants listened to white noise during the learning phases, and half completed the learning in silence. The noise group demonstrated superior recall accuracy over time, which was not impacted by participant attentional capacity. Recognition accuracy was near ceiling for both groups. These findings suggest that white noise has the capacity to enhance lexical acquisition.Stochastic resonance (SR), a phenomenon whereby signal processing is enhanced by the addition of random noise, has been widely demonstrated across various modalities, including visual, auditory, tactile and cross-modal forms of processing 1,2 . Of particular interest are findings that auditory noise has the capacity to enhance some aspects of human cognitive performance, such as the speed of arithmetical computations 3 . Research also suggests that the effects of noise may be mediated by the attentional capacity of participants. For instance, in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), listening to white noise has been shown to improve performance on memory 4 and go/no-go tasks 5 , as well as improve speech recognition thresholds 6 . White noise has also been shown to improve cognitive performance in typically developing school children rated as inattentive by their teachers, and worsen performance in those rated as attentive or highly attentive 7,8 . Such findings may be consistent with the moderate brain arousal (MBA) model 9 , which postulates a link between dopamine function and the effects of white noise on cognitive performance. The model proposes that suboptimal dopamine levels, such as may be found in people with ADHD, can result in reduced levels of neural noise which may impact cognitive performance. In such cases, the provision of a moderate level of white noise can optimize cognitive performance by increasing neural noise via the perceptual system. The model therefore predicts that adding white noise can be beneficial to cognitive performance in those with lower attention, but that the same level of noise may impair performance in those with normal attention where neural noise levels are already optimal.Recent neuroimaging evidence supports the notion that dopamine may underpin the modulatory influence of white noise on cognitive performance. Rausch et al. 10 demonstrated that the provision of white noise during the encoding of scene images resulted in mild improvements to subsequent recognition memory. More importantly, their analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data ...

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“…proposed a stochastic resonance theory by alter the "signal to noise" ratio through adding different level of background white noise (Helps et al, 2014;Sderlund & Sikstrm, 2012;Söderlund, Sikström, Loftesnes, & Sonuga-Barke, 2010). It would be interesting to further compare between background speech and white noise on visual WM to extend our findings out of normal participants.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…The length of these materials was edited using Adobe Audition software and restricted to 20 minutes. In addition, we set the volume of background speech and white noise to a fixed value beforehand, as previous research found it per se could modulate visual WM (Helps, Bamford, Sonuga-Barke, & Söderlund, 2014;Söderlund, Marklund, & Lacerda, 2009). To do so, we firstly used the keywords "white noise", "speech noise", "working memory" and "irrelevant speech effect" to search for relevant publications.…”

Section: Apparatus and Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

Background white noise and speech facilitate visual working memory

Han

Zhu

2020

Preprint

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Phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad have been proposed as two independent systems in working memory (WM). Previous studies suggest that background speech but not white noise declines performance of verbal WM.However, whether the background sounds influence visual WM remains unclear. In the present study, participants performed an orientation reproduction task while we played background speech or white noise.Electrodermal activity (EDA) and Electromyography (EMG) were recorded simultaneously. Results indicated that both background speech and white noise significantly improved visual WM performance, and such behavioral enhancement was significantly correlated with changes in physiological signals linked with arousal or emotion expression. Taken together, our results suggest that the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad is not fully independent and background speech and white noise facilitate visual WM through physiological changes in arousal and emotion expression.

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Different Effects of Adding White Noise on Cognitive Performance of Sub-, Normal and Super-Attentive School Children

Cited by 67 publications

References 64 publications

Child–Adult Differences in Using Dual-Task Paradigms to Measure Listening Effort

Child–Adult Differences in Using Dual-Task Paradigms to Measure Listening Effort

White noise enhances new-word learning in healthy adults

Background white noise and speech facilitate visual working memory

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