How does realistic classroom noise affect auditory selective attention?

Abstract

In the past years, more and more effort has been made to bring the reality in the lab to investigate cognitive performance in a close-to real life manner and, thus, increase the validity of current research. A first step towards being ecologically valid is using a dynamic binaural reproduction, which offers an accurate representation and allows the participants to engage in the acoustic scene. In a study on noise effects regarding the auditory selective attention of children, Loh et al. 2021 found that children were impaired by noise, while adults remained unaffected. However, they used white noise at a comparably low signal-to-noise ratio. To investigate the impact of a realistic scenario, the current work investigated a fluctuating realistic classroom noise using typical noise sources such as writing and the movement of chairs. Additionally, semantically meaningful speech was added as an attention capturing noise source. To get first insights into the effects of this realistic noise, a pilot study was conducted with adult participants in a virtual classroom scene.