Acoustic analysis of auditory environment in nursery room.

在欧洲和其他国家，听觉环境在婴儿时期的健康成长中起着重要的作用，这一点已经被认识到很长时间了。但是，目前日本对日托中心和幼儿园的育儿室的标准只规定了每个孩子的面积标准，而对听觉标准只规定了外部交通噪音等声音的水平。本研究旨在通过调查幼儿与幼儿及幼儿教师在幼儿室内的活动，以及对教师进行听力测试，制定适当的幼儿室听觉环境评价标准，以阐明日本的幼儿室具有适合幼儿及其看护人活动的听觉环境。结果如下：其中一个例子是，使用听力计和OAE筛选器测量教师的听力阈值的结果显示，幼儿保育后听力损失明显增加，表明“噪音”对可听性的影响。在有吸声过程的托儿所工作后，没有发现可听性下降的趋势。以上结果表明，测量幼儿每天长时间使用的托儿所室内的听觉环境可以作为了解幼儿和教师接触噪声量的线索，教师听力测试可以作为评估托儿所室内听觉环境的方法。

It has been recognized in Europe and the other countries for quite some time now that the auditory environment plays an important role in the healthy growth of children during infancy. However current Japanese standards for nursery rooms in day-care centers and kindergartens indicate area standards per child and for auditory standards, only sounds such as the level of external traffic noise are indicated.This study aims to develop proper evaluation standards for the auditory environment of nursery rooms by investigating the activities of children with their nursery and kindergarten teachers inside nursery rooms as well as conducting audiometric tests of the teachers in order to clarify that nursery rooms in Japan have an auditory environment suitable to support the activities of children and their care takers.The results are as follows. As one of the examples, the results of the audiometric threshold value of the teachers measured using audiometers and OAE screener showed that an increase in auditory loss was clearly seen right after childcare, indicating the impacts of “noises" on audibility. After working in nursery rooms where the sound absorption process was in place, no tendency for a decrease in audibility was seen. The results above revealed that measuring the auditory environment inside nursery rooms where children spend long periods of time everyday can be a clue to understanding the amountof noise that children and teachers are exposed to and audiometric testing for teachers can be used as amethod to evaluate the auditory environment inside nursery rooms.