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

由于孩子们还在学习如何最大限度地利用他们的环境，他们天生就更容易受到周围分散注意力的刺激的影响。因此，他们经常被要求在嘈杂的环境中决定哪些信息是重要的，以便集中注意力学习。Shield和dockrell（2004）在伦敦附近的学校进行了一项大型调查，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, and Lachmann（2013）发现了一个总体趋势，即背景噪音对儿童的注意力能力产生负面影响。更具体地说，孩子们表现出两种缺陷：一是缺乏调动注意力的动力，二是缺乏以战术方式调动注意力以进行学习的能力。尽管这些研究已经开始探讨噪音对婴儿选择和学习信息能力的影响，但所使用的分散注意力的刺激只是自然嘈杂环境的适度代表。解决这个问题很重要，因为如果实验不能恰当地代表这种噪音，那么结果就不能正确地描述这种噪音对婴儿的影响。为了解决现有研究的空白，我目前的硕士研究项目将测试婴儿在两种生态上有效的噪音/干扰因素存在的情况下的认知表现：1)环境噪音（如背景电视声音）和2)更集中的噪音（如几个人同时说话）。这种模式将作为一个试点，用于目前拟议的博士研究项目。

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.