The Influence of Background Noise on Language Development
Listen up Mammas! Is it just us, or does it seem like there is new baby related gadget coming to the market every day? With many of these gadgets, there also often comes some type of noice. Whether that is white noise, classical music, nature sounds, or the ever-so-dreaded car beeping sounds, when you really think about it, wherever the is a kid, there is typically plenty of noise too. With all of the sound machines, toy cars, games, and televisions that our kids are using constantly, we don’t often realize just how much noise our kids are hearing throughout the day. We found a systematic review, which is a collection of studies, titled, Influences of Background Noise on Infants and Children, that looks at how background noise in the environments of children may be affecting their language acquisition (Ericson & Newman, 2017). When it comes to kids, it is hard to know which noises may be helpful, and which noises may be getting in the way of your child’s language development.
Here is what you need to know:
The purpose of this systematic review is to provide an overview of the potential impact of early exposure to background noise on health, perception, cognition, and learning during early development. The goal of this review is to look at how much noisy environments seem to affect the development of young children.
It is important to understand that children begin learning language from the moment they are born, and they will need to understand that hearing plays a significant role in that process. They should also understand that baby’s ears are very sensitive to damage, and bombarding their systems with excess noise may have a real impact on their hearing ability, and potentially their speech and language skills.
The researchers concluded that there are many different types of noises that are present in infants’ and young children’s environments (e.g., background noises such as other people speaking and television), and this does appear to have some negative impact on health, perception, and learning in some children. Noise may specifically put some kids at disadvantage when it comes to learning speech, especially when background noise involves speech. This means that they may have a harder time learning speech and language in a noisy environment as compared to a quiet space.
The researchers concluded that children do have a harder time learning words with the presence of background noise. Background noise may be distracting, causing attentional shifts and information encoding failures, even with readily perceptible targets. In addition, the researchers concluded that children with learning impairments in particular, may be further impacted in terms of their speech and language development with the presence of excessive background noise. This research, along with potential future research on the impact of different types of noise in a child’s environment (e.g., sound machines and television) may lead to new recommendations to parents regarding noise in the home environment and in schools.
Main Takeaway: We live in a very noisy world, and sometimes that can be distracting, especially when kids are learning language! Consider enjoying some quiet time with your kiddo!
Here are some tips for how to cut out extra background noise in your house:
Limit television time, and turn it off when it is not being used
Schedule some quiet time with your kiddos throughout the day
Pick up some toys that do not make sound, and let your child’d imagination soar!
