Abstract
ObjectivesNoise often has detrimental effects on performance. However, because of the phenomenon of stochastic resonance (SR), auditory white noise (WN) can alter the “signal to noise” ratio and improve performance. The Moderate Brain Arousal (MBA) model postulates different levels of internal “neural noise” in individuals with different attentional capacities. This in turn determines the particular WN level most beneficial in each individual case–with one level of WN facilitating poor attenders but hindering super-attentive children. The objective of the present study is to find out if added WN affects cognitive performance differently in children that differ in attention ability.MethodsParticipants were teacher-rated super- (N = 25); normal- (N = 29) and sub-attentive (N = 36) children (aged 8 to 10 years). Two non-executive function (EF) tasks (a verbal episodic recall task and a delayed verbal recognition task) and two EF tasks (a visuo-spatial working memory test and a Go-NoGo task) were performed under three WN levels. The non-WN condition was only used to control for potential differences in background noise in the group testing situations.ResultsThere were different effects of WN on performance in the three groups-adding moderate WN worsened the performance of super-attentive children for both task types and improved EF performance in sub-attentive children. The normal-attentive children’s performance was unaffected by WN exposure. The shift from moderate to high levels of WN had little further effect on performance in any group.SignificanceThe predicted differential effect of WN on performance was confirmed. However, the failure to find evidence for an inverted U function challenges current theories. Alternative explanations are discussed. We propose that WN therapy should be further investigated as a possible non-pharmacological treatment for inattention.
Highlights
Under most circumstances, information processing is disturbed by environmental noise and other non-task compatible distractors [1,2]
We propose that white noise (WN) therapy should be further investigated as a possible non-pharmacological treatment for inattention
Based on the Moderate Brain Arousal (MBA) model we predicted that high levels of WN will have a facilitative effect on task performance for sub-attentive children but will disrupt performance in super-attentive children
Summary
Information processing is disturbed by environmental noise and other non-task compatible distractors [1,2]. Researchers have recently reported that under certain circumstances individuals with attention problems appear to benefit from the addition of specific forms of environmental noise This facilitative effect has been limited to non-vocal background music on simple arithmetic task performance, [4,5] but Stansfeld et al [6] found just that under certain conditions even road traffic noise can improve performance on episodic memory tasks, in children at risk of attention problems and academic under-achievement. Soderlund et al [7] have demonstrated that adding auditory white noise (WN) to the environment enhanced the memory performance of children with ADHD-type problems but disrupted that of non-ADHD control children These effects were replicated in a second study for children with sub-clinical attention problems [8]. How or by what mechanism does WN improve performance? Second, why does the same level of WN have such apparently different effects on children with different levels of attentional problems?
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