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Noise in daycare centers interferes with infants' language acquisition

A newly published study adds to the growing body of evidence on the impact the design of the classroom environment has on children's development and learning.

In one of the first research studies on the impact of background noise on infants, Rochelle Newman, a cognitive psychologist in the University of Maryland's department of hearing and speech sciences and director of the Language Perception and Development Laboratories, has found that the noise levels in some daycare centers can interfere with the language development of infants younger than 13 months. "This might potentially delay the onset of speech," says Newman. "Caregivers may think they're giving the right kind of language experiences, but all too often, the talk may be going over the children's heads."

Newman studied 100 infants at ages 5 months, 9 months and 13 months and tested how they reacted to the sound of a woman speaking their name or unfamiliar names in the presence of background noise.

"Infants learn to speak by being spoken to, but during their first year they have difficulty distinguishing between voices in even mildly noisy rooms," Newman says. "So conversation directed at the child may simply blend into the background and go unrecognized."

Adults can understand speech when the voice they are listening to is 8 db softer than the background noise, yet the study found that infants had difficulty when the target voice was even 5 db louder than the background noise. The results showed the voice had to be 10 db louder than the background noise for the infants not to have difficulty listening. Newman says, "The 5-month-olds could separate the streams of conversation and focus on the voice calling them if the background was at a level you might find in a romantic restaurant with soft and intimate conversations. But at that age the kids couldn't isolate the foreground voice if the noise level nearly doubled - what you might hear in a crowded fast food restaurant."

By 13 months, the children were much better able to separate the voice of the speaker from the background noise. Newman concluded that young infants' sensitivity to noise imposes strict limits on the kinds of setting where they might be capable of learning their native language. "There's a need for awareness," Newman adds. "That first year is critical to infants. They're struggling to hear what's said to them if there's too much noise, and at the same time laying the foundation for learning to speak." Newman says that infants that spend a lot of time in noisy environments, including day care centers that tend to be loud, may take longer to learn to talk.

This study suggests that the new American National Standards Institute's New Classroom Acoustics Standard (ANSI S12.60-2002) may not adequately address the acoustic environment needs for infant classrooms.

Reference

• Newman, R. (2005). The Cocktail Party Effect in Infants Revisited: Listening to One's Name in Noise. Developmental Psychology 41(2), 352-362.

Additional reading on New Classroom Acoustics Standard

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