Effects of visual and auditory distractors on learning disabled and normal children's recognition memory performance.

Abstract

This research investigated whether distractibility in learning disabled children could be predicted on the basis of diagnosed visual and auditory learning deficits. Twenty-six children in Grades 2, 3, and 4 were classified as having visual or auditory reading disorders. They and 17 normally achieving children performed visual and auditory recognition memory tasks, with visual or auditory distractors presented on 80% of the trials. Analysis of error frequencies revealed that with distractors, children in the two learning disabled groups made more errors and did not improve over trials as much as the normal control children. However, the predicted interaction between learning disability modality and task or distractor modality did not obtain. Rather, all three subject groups made more errors when task and distractor were in the same modality.

Effects of classroom noise on performance and activity of second-grade hyperactive and control children.

“…Here high initial levels of activity and poor performance may have represented initial response uncertainty, which decreased over time. Control children have been previously noted to adapt to such initial difficulties faster (i.e., they show more rapid decreases in activity and errors) than do (a) hyperactive children (Zentall, Zentall, & Booth, 1978) and (b) learning disabled children (Patton & Offenbach, 1978). Hyperactive children may habituate more slowly to new, embedded, or unstructured stimuli and may habituate more rapidly to familiar predictable stimuli.…”

“…For example, retarded children tended to be more active when presented recordings of spoken material at 80 dB (i.e., a reading of Pinnocchio) than when presented music of equivalent sound levels or during periods of silence (Reardon & Bell, 1970). Similarly, learning disabled children made more errors on recognition memory tasks in the presence of portions of a 60-dB children's story than did control children (Patton & Offenbach, 1978). Linguistic distractors (64-76 dB) disrupted the performance of suspected learning disabled children but not of control children (Lasky & Tobin, 1973).…”

The Effect of Music Genre on a Memory Task

“…Roy (2009, p. 505) stated, "It's unusual for students not to be around music; she explains that this is true because of the increased availability of portable music devices and free music on the interne." Most students play music while studying (Patton and Offenbach, 1978). Anderson and Fuller, 2010, found that about 70% of students listen to music while studying.…”