How do Infants Direct their Attention when Learning in a Noisy Environment?

由于孩子们仍在学习如何最大限度地利用他们的环境，他们天生更容易受到周围令人分心的刺激的影响。因此，他们经常被要求决定在嘈杂的环境中哪些信息是重要的，为了学习，他们的注意力集中在哪些信息上。在伦敦周围学校进行的一项大型调查中，Shield和Dockrell(2004)发现，内部噪音对早期认知发展有负面影响。此外，在一篇关于噪音对儿童认知表现影响的文献综述中，Klatte、Bergström和Lachmann(2013)发现了背景噪音对他们的注意能力产生负面影响的总体趋势。更具体地说，儿童表现出缺乏动力来分配他们的注意力，以及为了学习而以战术方式分配他们的注意力的能力。尽管这些研究已经开始讨论噪音对婴儿选择和学习信息的能力的影响，但所使用的分心刺激只是适度地代表了自然噪音环境。解决这一问题很重要，因为如果实验不能恰当地代表这种噪音，那么结果就不会正确地描述这对婴儿的影响。为了解决现有研究中的差距，我目前的硕士研究项目将测试婴儿的认知表现，同时存在两种具有生态有效性的噪音/干扰：1)环境噪音(例如，背景电视声音)和2)更集中的噪音(例如，几个人同时说话)。这一范例将作为目前拟议的博士研究项目所用内容的试点。

As children are still learning how to use their environment to their utmost advantage, theyare inherently more susceptible to the distracting stimuli around them. As such, they are oftentasked with determining which information in their noisy environment is important to focus theirattention on in order to learn. In a large survey conducted in schools around London, Shield andDockrell (2004) found that internal noise has a negative influence on early cognitivedevelopment. Furthermore, in a literary review on the effect of noise on children's cognitiveperformance, Klatte, Bergström, and Lachmann (2013) found an overall trend that backgroundnoise negatively affects their attentional abilities. More specifically, children show both a deficitin being motivated to deploy their attention, and of being capable of deploying their attention ina tactical way in order to learn.Though these studies have begun to address the effect of noise on infants' ability to selectand learn information, the distracting stimuli used are only moderately representative of anaturally noisy environment. This is important to address, because if experiments are notappropriately representing this noise, then the results will not correctly depict what impact this ishaving on infants. In order to address the gap in the extant research, my current Master'sresearch project will test infants' cognitive performance while two ecologically validnoises/distractors are present: 1) ambient environmental noise (e.g., background televisionsounds) and, 2) more focused noise (e.g., several people talking at the same time). This paradigmwould serve as a pilot for what would be used in the currently proposed PhD research project.