Noise exposure in pre- and primary schools: exploring noise effects on young children

As the awareness of health effects caused by noise has grown in recent years, so has the importance of studying noise in educational buildings. This dissertation focuses specifically on the impact of noise on young children in educational buildings from a children’s perspective, a topic that has not been extensively explored. Previous research indicated that noise can significantly impact children’s performance and cognition, making this a crucial area of study. However, noise in educational buildings is complex, involving internal background noise, individual distracting sound incidences, external sources, and noise generated by children during activities. Communication in such environments resembles the cocktail-party effect. Focusing on children’s perspective in these complex acoustic environments, there is limited research on the perceptual and cognitive differences between children and adults regarding noise, and whether adult-based insights apply to children remains uncertain. The dissertation has two primary aims: 1.) addressing the complexity of noise in educational buildings, and 2.) examining noise effects on young children in controlled listening experiments. For the first aim, children’s perspectives are integrated by assessing noise scenes through room acoustics and in-situ measurements using head and torso simulators of different anthropometric sizes. Frequency-dependent measures (e.g., psychoacoustic parameters) and their relation to subjective noise ratings by children and adults are explored. Furthermore, the impact of different activities on noise levels is investigated. For the second aim, a child-appropriate listening experiment framework is developed to study young children’s cognitive performance, focusing on auditory selective attention in realistic noisy environments. This includes creating and validating a paradigm suited for children, investigating age effects in children aged three to six, and examining noise effects on cognition and physical stress through changes in heart rate variability.