Not only do children who go to school near noisy roads appear to be less able to pay attention, they also have a poorer memory.

Particularly in large cities, it is almost unavoidable that the school is located near a noisy road. It means that many children are exposed to a lot of noise on a daily basis. But is that too bad? A new study suggests so and shows that children who hear a lot of traffic noise at school are lagging behind in their cognitive development.

Study

Researchers took a closer look at 38 different schools in Barcelona in the study. The study included a whopping 2,680 children, ages 7 to 10. To determine the potential impact of traffic noise on cognitive development, the researchers studied two skills that develop rapidly during this age and are essential for learning and school performance: attention and working memory.

More about attention and working memory
The team examined, among other things, whether the children paid attention to certain stimuli and whether they could concentrate well on a specific task for a longer period of time. Working memory is a temporary repository of task-relevant information in the brain. Among other things, it plays a role in remembering and using newly acquired knowledge, such as making calculations. When we need to process information stored in working memory continuously and effectively, we use the so-called complex working memory.

The school children were studied over a period of 12 months. In addition, noise measurements were carried out on the playgrounds and in the classrooms during the same period.

Cognitive development

The study shows that traffic noise significantly affects the cognitive development of schoolchildren. Children who are exposed to more traffic noises were less able to maintain their attention and had a poorer memory. For example, a 5 decibel increase in noise level resulted in a 5 percent slower development of attention skills compared to students in schools without traffic noise. Working memory development was slightly more than 11 percent slower than average and complex working memory development was 23.5 percent slower.

Disturbing

Overall, the researchers show that traffic noise significantly retards the development of crucial memory and attention skills in primary school children. “Our findings suggest that noise peaks in the classroom may be disruptive to neurodevelopment,” study researcher Maria Foraster concluded. And that is a bad thing. “Our study supports the hypothesis that childhood is a vulnerable period in which external stimuli such as sound can influence cognitive development that occurs before adolescence,” added researcher Jordi Sunyer.

Action

Because many schools have to deal with noise pollution, several scientists are pushing for action. “As many European children living in large cities are exposed to traffic noise, this study has implications for government policy to reduce road noise near schools,” said Iroise Dumontheil, professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of London. . In addition, tackling noise is also important for equality, says researcher Trevor Cox, of the University of Salford. “Schools in deprived areas are usually located in noisier places.”

Cox underlines that traffic noise is a side effect of modern life. “But we are still too little aware of how this harms our health and well-being,” he continues. The new study is therefore a sobering reminder. The researchers hope to expand their study to other cities to see if noise pollution also hinders the cognitive development of schoolchildren.