Noise affects several aspects of children's behavioral and psychological
functioning, including learning to read as well as their chronic stress levels.
The excerpt below is from the book "Silent Scourge: Children,
pollution, and why scientists disagree" (2003). Click here to
go to a website with reviews of the book, pdf files you can download, and
some links to web pages about children and noise.
The following is Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press, all rights reserved.
Chapter 5. Noise and Children’s Development (Excerpt from the book Silent
Scourge: Children, pollution, and why scientists disagree)
" Everyone knows that noise that is loud enough can damage a
person’s hearing. In this chapter I concentrate mainly on what researchers
call the ‘nonauditory’ effects of noise, or how noise affects well-being
aside from its effects on our hearing organs. The nonauditory effects of
noise in children fall in two main categories: reading and other aspects
of cognitive performance, and stress-related responses such as annoyance,
blood pressure, secretion of stress-related hormones, and mental health.
These two categories are also linked to the auditory effects of noise. A
very important auditory effect of noise is interference with the intelligibility
of speech. Hearing other people talk is critical to children’s early language
development. But trying to hear someone talk in a noisy environment can produce
other nonauditory effects. Memory and performance can be impaired because
of the extra effort required to decipher speech (for an example, see Rabbitt,
1966). Mood can also become more negative, and the person feels tired or
stressed (see Jones & Broadbent, 1979). Keep in mind that the auditory
and nonauditory effects of noise are often interlaced.
I have emphasized the research on the effects of noise
on children’s reading because poor reading can cascade into poor overall
academic performance and lack of motivation in school. One important principle
of developmental psychology is that negative impacts early in life, if combined
with other negative influences, can affect the direction of the rest of the
child’s development (Rutter, 1979; Sameroff & Chandler, 1975; Sameroff
et al., 1998). Poor reading is a negative factor that can lead to other academic
and social problems, and so anything that affects children’s early reading
needs careful consideration. As you will see, the research regarding noise
and reading is not unequivocal, and researchers do not agree about why noise
can impede the process of learning to read--some think it is that noise affects
children’s ability to discern important speech sounds (an auditory effect
of noise) and others think noise affects children’s ability to concentrate
or persist at difficult tasks (a nonauditory effect). Both of these processes
could be involved. But regardless of the specific processes responsible for
the effects of noise on children’s reading, poor reading can be the first
in a chain of events that ultimately affects a child’s later quality of life--educational
attainment, employment and job performance, enjoyment of literature, exposure
to a wide variety of ideas through books, and so on.
Another type of cascading effect on later development
can begin with exposure to excessive noise prenatally or during early infancy.
We have seen that prenatal exposures to PCBs, mercury, and nicotine can alter
a child’s later functioning. As with pesticides, well designed long-term
studies of how prenatal exposure to noise influences later human development
have not really been done yet. Evidence from both animal and human research
suggests that prenatal noise may have negative auditory and nonauditory effects
on development.
After reviewing the research on how noise affects children’s
well-being, I examine U.S. noise policy and how it fails to consider the
effects of noise on children’s development. Before addressing the effects
of noise on development, first I cover a little bit of technical information
about sound and how it is measured. ..."
(to read more go to my web page on Children
and Pollution)
The book "Silent Scourge: Children, pollution, and why scientists disagree"
covers the behavioral and psychological effects of pollutants that we commonly
encounter in the environment. The book is written by Colleen Moore (Professor
of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and covers these topics.
Chapter 1 covers lead
Chapter 2 covers mercury.
Chapter 3 covers PCBs
Chapter 4 covers certain pesticides
Chapter 5 covers the effects of noise on children's development
Chapter 6 covers community pollution disasters including Chernobyl, Three
Mile Island, Love Canal
Chapter 7 The Precautionary Principle
click here to be redirected to
my web page on children and pollution