The effects of classroom and environmental noise on children’s academic performance

There has been a considerable amount of research in the past 40 years into the effects of noise on the performance of school children (Hetu et al. 1990; Evans & Lepore 1993; Shield & Dockrell 2003). It is generally accepted that noise has a detrimental effect upon the learning and performance of primary school children, and that the older children in this age group are more affected than the younger children (Berglund & Lindvall 1995; Institute for Environment and Health 1997). Activities affected by noise include memory, reading, motivation, and attention (Bronzaft 1981; Cohen et al. 1981; Hygge et al. 1996; Berg et al. 1996; Maxwell & Evans 2000; Lundquist et al. 2000; Haines et al. 2002; Clark et al. 2006). There is increasing evidence that poor classroom acoustics can have a particularly negative effect upon children with special needs such as hearing impairment (Nelson & Soli 2000) or learning difficulties (Bradlow et al. 2003)