Researchers have found that the attention and memory of children in primary school are disturbed by traffic noise around the school building.
- External stimuli, such as noise, can affect the rapid process of cognitive development that takes place before adolescence.
- Noise exposure at school during the day is more detrimental than that at home as it affects vulnerable windows of concentration and learning processes.
To choose the right school for your child, it would seem that the noise level of the road around the establishment is an element to take into account! Indeed, its real impact on children’s health is still poorly understood, but a new study, published in PLoS Medicinecarried out in 38 schools in Barcelona, makes it possible to take the measure of the problem.
The experiment involved 2,680 children between the ages of 7 and 10, and the fieldwork for the study was carried out over a 12-month period in 2012 and 2013, during which participants took cognitive tests at four occasions. Over the same period, noise measurements were taken in front of the 38 participating schools, as well as in playgrounds and inside classrooms.
Slower cognitive development
According to the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), children who attend schools with noisier traffic have slower cognitive development. For example, a 5 dB increase in outdoor noise levels resulted in working memory development 11.4% slower than average and complex working memory development 23.5% slower than average. the average. Similarly, exposure to an additional 5 dB of outdoor traffic noise resulted in attention span development 4.8% slower than average.
Skills essential for learning and academic success
Attention and working memory are two skills that develop rapidly during pre-adolescence and are essential for learning and academic success. Attention includes processes, such as selective attention to specific stimuli or concentration on a specific task for an extended period. Working memory is the system that allows us to hold information in our minds and manipulate it for a short period of time. When we need to continuously and efficiently process information stored in working memory, we use what is known as complex working memory.
Worse performance
In the analysis of exterior noise in schools, a higher average noise level (a street with heavy road traffic corresponds to 80 db) and a greater fluctuation in noise levels (where one passes from less noise louder to louder noise) were both associated with poorer student performance on all tests.
Within the classroom, greater fluctuation in noise levels was also associated with slower progress over the year on all cognitive tests. However, children exposed to higher average noise levels in the classroom (a noisy classroom is 70 db) over the year performed worse than students in quieter classrooms only on the db test. be careful, but not for working memory tests.
“This result suggests that the noise peaks within the classroom may be more disruptive to neurodevelopment than the average decibel level”commented Maria Foraster, researcher at ISGlobal and lead author of the study. “This is important because it supports the hypothesis that noise characteristics may be more influential than average sound levels, despite the fact that current policies are based only on average decibels.”
The effects of transport
This study adds to the body of evidence regarding the effects of transport on children’s cognitive development, which have been observed so far in schools exposed to aircraft noise as well as in schools exposed to air pollution related to to traffic. “The health of the population, especially of the most vulnerable groups such as children, should be the basis of urban planning”can we read in a statement from theInserm.
