Effects of background noise on word learning in preschool-age children

背景噪音对学龄前儿童单词学习的影响

• 批准号: 10652478
• 负责人: TINA M GRIECO-CALUB
• 金额: $ 15.73万
• 依托单位: RUSH UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-09 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10652478
• 关键词: 6 year old; Academic achievement; Affect; Age; Air; Attention; Biological Factors; Characteristics; Child; Child Behavior; Child Development; Child Language; Childhood; Chronic; Cognitive; Computers; Development; Educational process of instructing; Employment; Ensure; Environment; Equilibrium; Exposure to; Familiarity; Foundations; Future; Goals; Heating; Individual Differences; Knowledge; Language; Language Delays; Language Development; Language Development Disorders; Learning; Link; Literature; Location; Longevity; Loudness; Methodology; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; Noise; Normal Statistical Distribution; Nursery Schools; Occupational; Outcome; Perception; Performance; Phonetics; Predisposition; Process; Randomized; Reader; Research; Research Priority; Risk; Scheme; School-Age Population; Semantics; Short-Term Memory; Signal Transduction; Source; Spatial Distribution; Speech; Speech Perception; Stream; System; Taxes; Television; Testing; Time; Training; Variant; Vocabulary; Work; attentional control; career; cognitive ability; cognitive development; cognitive process; cohort; early childhood; hearing impairment; improved; literacy; novel; phonology; public health relevance; skill acquisition; skills; success; therapy design; ventilation; word learning

Project Summary/Abstract: Chronic exposure to background noise during childhood negatively impacts language, literacy, and cognitive development, with repercussions for children’s academic achievement and future employment potential. A putative mechanism linking noise to decrements in language and cognitive development is that noise disrupts young children’s ability to build a vocabulary. A robust literature demonstrates that noise disrupts the perception of spoken words primarily through energetic masking, in which noise limits high fidelity encoding of target speech, and informational masking, in which noise taxes cognitive processes such as attentional control and working memory. Background noise likely disrupts word learning through similar mechanisms. Although there have been studies testing the effects of noise on word learning, these studies are few in number and variable in methodology. The noises in children’s naturalistic environments vary in type (e.g., environmental noise [air conditioners] and background speech), intensity level (i.e., how loud it is), semantic content (i.e., whether the child understands the background speech), and spatial location: factors that exert different amounts of energetic and informational masking. Additionally, differences in cognitive and language abilities among preschool-age children likely affect their susceptibility to the negative effects of noise. Thus, we lack knowledge about how cognitive factors interact with variations in noise to affect word learning in young children. This is a critical gap because spoken input is the sole source of word learning in prereaders and an important source of word learning over the lifespan. The present study will test the time course of novel word learning in the presence of background noise that varies in type, spatial location, semantic content, and intensity level, which are factors that influence young children’s perception of target speech. Specifically, the noise will vary by whether it contains speech content or not (Aim 1), whether it is co-located or spatially separated from the target speech (Aim 2), whether it contains familiar semantic and phonetic content versus only familiar phonetic content (Aim 3), and its intensity level (Aims 1, 3). To accomplish these aims, a large cohort of children between 4 and 6 years of age will be trained on novel word- referent pairs across three subsequent days. This age range is targeted because children’s speech perception is highly susceptible to the effects of noise during this time in development, and it is an important age to build foundational vocabulary skills. Each child will be tested in one noise condition, and the noise will be systematically changed across conditions. Through this approach, we will determine how various noise conditions affect both the number of words learned and the phonological precision of children’s representation of the words throughout the learning process. This work aligns with the research priorities of the Child Development and Behavior Branch of the NICHD as we will identify how aspects of children’s environments affect word learning, a critical process for long-term language, cognitive, and academic outcomes.

项目摘要/摘要：童年时期长期接触背景噪音会产生负面影响 语言、读写能力和认知发展，对儿童的学业成绩和 未来的就业潜力。将噪音与语言和认知能力下降联系起来的假定机制 噪音会破坏幼儿建立词汇的能力。扎实的文献 表明噪声主要通过能量掩蔽来扰乱口语的感知， 其中噪声限制了目标语音的高保真编码，以及信息掩蔽，其中噪声税 认知过程，例如注意力控制和工作记忆。背景噪音可能会干扰文字 通过类似的机制进行学习。尽管已经有研究测试噪音对单词的影响 学习方面，这些研究数量很少，方法也各不相同。儿童自然主义中的噪音 环境的类型（例如环境噪音[空调]和背景语音）、强度各不相同 级别（即声音有多大）、语义内容（即孩子是否理解背景语音）以及 空间位置：施加不同量的能量和信息掩蔽的因素。此外， 学龄前儿童认知和语言能力的差异可能会影响他们的易感性 噪音的负面影响。因此，我们缺乏关于认知因素如何与变化相互作用的知识 噪音会影响幼儿的单词学习。这是一个关键的差距，因为语音输入是唯一的来源 是预读者单词学习的重要内容，也是终生单词学习的重要来源。目前的研究 将测试在存在不同类型、空间的背景噪音的情况下新词学习的时间过程 位置、语义内容和强度水平，这些都是影响幼儿感知的因素 目标演讲。具体来说，噪声将根据是否包含语音内容（目标 1）、是否包含语音内容而变化。 它与目标语音位于同一位置或在空间上分离（目标 2），是否包含熟悉的语义 和语音内容与仅熟悉的语音内容（目标 3）及其强度级别（目标 1、3）。到 为了实现这些目标，一大批 4 至 6 岁的儿童将接受新词训练—— 随后三天的参考对。这个年龄段是有针对性的，因为儿童的言语感知 在这个发育时期非常容易受到噪音的影响，这是一个重要的年龄 基础词汇技能。每个孩子都会在一种噪音条件下进行测试，噪音将根据 随条件的不同而系统地改变。通过这种方法，我们将确定各种噪声如何 条件会影响所学单词的数量和儿童表达的语音精度 整个学习过程中的单词。这项工作符合儿童的研究重点 NICHD 的发展和行为部门，我们将确定儿童环境的各个方面 影响单词学习，这是长期语言、认知和学术成果的关键过程。