The Effect of Background Noise on a "Studying for an Exam"Task in an Open-Plan Study Environment: A Laboratory Study

Students can be disturbed by background noise while working in an open-plan study environment. To improve the acoustic quality of open-plan study environments a study was done on the influence of different sound scenarios on students working on a typical student task, “studying for an exam”. Three sound scenarios and a quiet reference sound scenario were developed, based on the sound environment of a real open-plan study environment, with a varying number of talkers in the background and different reverberation times of the study environment. Seventy students worked on a set of tasks simulating a “studying for an exam” task while being exposed to the sound scenarios. This task comprises a reading comprehension task with text memory by delayed answering questions about the text, with additional tasks being performed in the gap between studying the text and retrieving. These additional tasks are a mental arithmetic task and a logical reasoning task. Performance, self-estimated performance and disturbance of students were measured. No significant effect of the sound scenarios was found on performance of students working on the reading comprehension task with text memory and the mental arithmetic task. However, a significant effect of sound was found on performance of students working on the logical reasoning task. Furthermore, a significant effect of the sound scenarios was found on self-estimated performance and perceived disturbance for all tasks from which the reading comprehension task with text memory was the most disturbed task. It is argued that the absence of a detrimental sound effect on the performance of students working on a reading comprehension task with text memory is a result of focusing due to task engagement and task difficulty, both aspects working as a “shield against distraction”

Early environmental quality and life-course mental health effects: The Equal-Life project.

Background: There is increasing evidence that a complex interplay of factors within environments in which children grows up, contributes to children's suboptimal mental health and cognitive development. The concept of the life-course exposome helps to study the impact of the physical and social environment, including social inequities, on cognitive development and mental health over time. Methods: Equal-Life develops and tests combined exposures and their effects on children's mental health and cognitive development. Data from eight birth-cohorts and three school studies (N = 240.000) linked to exposure data, will provide insights and policy guidance into aspects of physical and social exposures hitherto untapped, at different scale levels and timeframes, while accounting for social inequities. Reasoning from the outcome point of view, relevant stakeholders participate in the formulation and validation of research questions, and in the formulation of environmental hazards. Exposure assessment combines GIS-based environmental indicators with omics approaches and new data sources, forming the early-life exposome. Statistical tools integrate data at different spatial and temporal granularity and combine exploratory machine learning models with hypothesis-driven causal modeling. Conclusions: Equal-Life contributes to the development and utilization of the exposome concept by (1) integrating the internal, physical and social exposomes, (2) studying a distinct set of life-course effects on a child's development and mental health (3) characterizing the child's environment at different developmental stages and in different activity spaces, (4) looking at supportive environments for child development, rather than merely pollutants, and (5) combining physical, social indicators with novel effect markers and using new data sources describing child activity patterns and environments

Room acoustic parameters in a physical scale model of the new Music Centre in Eindhoven:measurement method and results

A physical model with a scale of 1:10 has been constructed to aid in the design of the new Music Centre in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. This paper discusses the measurement method that has been used to acquire impulse responses in this model and to obtain important room acoustic parameters. As a model source a special high-frequency omni-directional sound source was used, fed by a swept sine wave. The microphone signal was deconvolved to obtain the impulse responses. From these impulse responses we calculated the reverberation time, the early decay time, the clarity, the Schwerpunktzeit (centre time) and the lateral efficiency. For the lateral efficiency a velocity-type microphone response is needed, which was obtained from a two-channel intensity probe. The paper concludes with a summary of the results that were obtained, indicating that the hall will sound very bright and spacious

Early environmental quality and life-course mental health effects:The Equal-Life project

There is increasing evidence that a complex interplay of factors within children's environments, including environmental noise, contributes to mental ill-health and suboptimal cognitive development later on in life. The concept of the life-course exposome helps to study the impact of the physical (e.g., acoustic) and social environment on cognitive development and mental health in young people over time. Equal-Life develops and tests combined exposures. Data from eleven studies (N=240.000) linked to exposure data will provide insights and policy guidance into aspects of physical and social exposures hitherto untapped at different scale levels and timeframes while accounting for social inequities. Exposure assessment combines GIS-based environmental indicators with omics approaches and new data sources, forming the early-life exposome. Statistical tools integrate data at different spatial and temporal granularity and combine exploratory machine learning models with hypothesis-driven causal modeling. Equal-Life contributes to the exposome concept by 1) integrating the internal, physical and social exposomes, 2) studying life-course effects on a child's development and mental health, 3) characterizing the child's environment at different stages and in different activity spaces, 4) looking at supportive environments for child development, rather than merely pollutants, 5) combining physical, social indicators with novel effect markers.</p

Early environmental quality and life-course mental health effects:The Equal-Life project

There is increasing evidence that a complex interplay of factors within children's environments, including environmental noise, contributes to mental ill-health and suboptimal cognitive development later on in life. The concept of the life-course exposome helps to study the impact of the physical (e.g., acoustic) and social environment on cognitive development and mental health in young people over time. Equal-Life develops and tests combined exposures. Data from eleven studies (N=240.000) linked to exposure data will provide insights and policy guidance into aspects of physical and social exposures hitherto untapped at different scale levels and timeframes while accounting for social inequities. Exposure assessment combines GIS-based environmental indicators with omics approaches and new data sources, forming the early-life exposome. Statistical tools integrate data at different spatial and temporal granularity and combine exploratory machine learning models with hypothesis-driven causal modeling. Equal-Life contributes to the exposome concept by 1) integrating the internal, physical and social exposomes, 2) studying life-course effects on a child's development and mental health, 3) characterizing the child's environment at different stages and in different activity spaces, 4) looking at supportive environments for child development, rather than merely pollutants, 5) combining physical, social indicators with novel effect markers.</p

Adopting a child perspective for exposome research on mental health and cognitive development:Conceptualisation and opportunities

Mental disorders among children and adolescents pose a significant global challenge. The exposome framework covering the totality of internal, social and physical exposures over a lifetime provides opportunities to better understand the causes of and processes related to mental health, and cognitive functioning. The paper presents a conceptual framework on exposome, mental health, and cognitive development in children and adolescents, with potential mediating pathways, providing a possibility for interventions along the life course. The paper underscores the significance of adopting a child perspective to the exposome, acknowledging children's specific vulnerability, including differential exposures, susceptibility of effects and capacity to respond; their susceptibility during development and growth, highlighting neurodevelopmental processes from conception to young adulthood that are highly sensitive to external exposures. Further, critical periods when exposures may have significant effects on a child's development and future health are addressed. The paper stresses that children's behaviour, physiology, activity pattern and place for activities make them differently vulnerable to environmental pollutants, and calls for child-specific assessment methods, currently lacking within today's health frameworks. The importance of understanding the interplay between structure and agency is emphasized, where agency is guided by social structures and practices and vice-versa. An intersectional approach that acknowledges the interplay of social and physical exposures as well as a global and rural perspective on exposome is further pointed out. To advance the exposome field, interdisciplinary efforts that involve multiple scientific disciplines are crucial. By adopting a child perspective and incorporating an exposome approach, we can gain a comprehensive understanding of how exposures impact children's mental health and cognitive development leading to better outcomes.</p

The Effects of Noise on Cognitive Performance and Helplessness in Childhood: A Review

Environmental noise affects our daily functioning in many ways, and the cognitive, motivational, and emotional effects of noise are intertwined. Our task performance under noisy conditions depends on our ability to cope with the noise and our cognitive resources. The process of (failed) coping may wear us out cognitively, lead to learned helplessness, and, consequently, alter the motivation to persist in a task. The direct effect of irrelevant sounds on cognitive functioning in children is relatively well-established, however, the research on the framework of learned helplessness is limited when it comes to children. Learned helplessness can give more insight into effects of environmental noise on learning and child development and how the effects of short-term and long-term exposure interact. A systematic literature review is performed to assess to what extent the current evidence addresses the (interaction) effects of the sound environment on cognition and learned helplessness as measured by motivation in children and young adults up to the age of 21. The search resulted in 8 included papers that addressed both cognition and learned helplessness in their research. The included papers study children between 8-13 years old and show evidence for a relation between environmental noise, cognition, and helplessness individually, but none study a possible interaction. Based on the individual study designs, it could be hypothesized that cognitive fatigue may play a role in the interaction. Studies that conducted motivation tasks after cognitive tasks found stronger effects than those that conducted tasks in a random order. More research is needed using the same methods in different age groups to further assess the interaction between cognition and learned helplessness in relation to the sound environment

Studying for an exam in an open-plan study environment: Does background noise impair performance?

Students in higher education work for a large part of their time in rather noisy open-plan study environments (OPSEs). A recent field research has shown that almost 40 percent of the students were 'much' to 'very much' disturbed by background noise while working in an OPSE. Moreover, the students indicated that they were very disturbed by the background noise when they were studying for an exam. Although the influence of background noise on different cognitive tasks has been shown in many studies, little is known about this student task. Therefore, the aim of this work is to analyze the influence of background noise on the 'studying for an exam' task in an OPSE. For this experiment a set of tasks was developed to simulate 'studying for an exam'. As output measures, the performance of students was measured while performing the simulated studying task in different realistic background sound scenarios. These sound scenarios varying in background speech and room acoustics were developed using computational acoustic modelling of an existing OPSE and applying auralization with student voices. In the current paper the research design and first results of the experiments are presented.</p