The influence of background noise on language comprehension of school-aged children: The role of noise types and individual differences

Learning in a school context requires reading and listening comprehension, often under background noise. Background noise reduces language comprehension ability. However, or knowledge about the mechanisms behind this is limited. The proposed project will compare two theories, offering contradictory explanations for background noise effects.

The interference-by-process account assumes that the use of similar processes leads to reduced processing capacity.

The renewed view of age-related distraction assumes that background noise leads to distraction but less for reading comprehension.

The proposed project aims to: 1). investigate if background noise effects on language comprehension differ depending on if the background noise has semantic content and depending on the modality of the language comprehension task and, 2). investigate individual differences in the susceptibility to background noise.

The reading and listening comprehension of 156 fifth graders in silence will be compared to two background noise conditions: one with and one without semantic content.

Regression analysis will be used to analyze how much individual variance in the background noise effects is explained by differences in language and cognitive ability.

The results from this project can be used to evaluate if the interference-by-process account or the renewed view of age-related distraction offers a better explanation for background noise effects on language comprehension in school-aged children.