Effect Of Noise And Reverberation On Memory Performance Of Children In Working Classroom

Not only the students need hear what the teachers said clearly, but also they need remember what the teachers said during the class. However, excessive noise and unfavorable reverberation in the classroom disturb the memory performance of students, which has effect on the learning of students in classroom. For students(children) in the primary school, this effect is particularly serious. This paper discusses the effects of reverberation and noise on the memory performance of children with different ages under different reverberation and noise conditions. Its aim is to provide some basic data and guidance for the improvement of classroom acoustical environment in primary school. The main results of this paper list as follows:Chinese phrase test signals and speech-shape noise were reproduced by a loudspeaker with its directivity similar to human mouth in two primary school classrooms with different reverberation time(T30). The Chinese phrase memory scores were obtained from the grade 3 and 6 children under the different T30 and different noise level conditions. The results showed that whether visual or auditory memory mode was used, noise and T30 have a significant influence on children’s memory behavior of Chinese spoken phrase lists. The lower noise level and the shorter T30 is, the better the memory behavior of Chinese phrase for children. The Chinese phrase memory scores increase with age. The older children’s age is, the better the memory behavior is. The phrase short-term memory scores from visual memory is higher than those from auditory memory, and the influence of noise and T30 on different mode(visual and auditory) memory is different, the effect of noise and T30 on auditory memory is more significant than visual memory.Room acoustic simulation is used to obtain three different kinds of reverberation conditions, the working memory capacity of grade 3 and 6 children were tested by the means of headphone reproduction in a quiet classroom. The working memory span scores were obtained under the different T30 and different SNR conditions. The results demonstrated that children’s age, reverberation time and SNR had significant effect on children’s working memory span scores. With the increase of SNR, the scores of working memory span increased gradually. There is a significantly different of children’s working memory span scores between SNR of 3d BA and 15 d BA and there is no significant difference in the children’s working memory span scores between the SNR of 9d BA and 3d BA, as well as 9d BA and 15 d BA. Children’s working memory span scores increases with the decrease of the T30 in the same age and SNR. There is a significantly different of children’s working memory span scores between T30 of 0.5s and 1.2s and there is no significant difference in the children’s working memory span scores between the T30 of 0.8s and 0.5s, as well as 0.8s and 1.2s. Under the same kind of SNR and the same T30, the children’s working memory span scores was increased with the increase of the age. Children’s working memory span scores related to the age of children, the reverberation time and the SNR. The multiple relationship coefficient is 0.99.This paper explored the effects of noise and reverberation of different ages of the children’s memory performance from two aspects of Chinese phrase short-term memory and working memory span. The research results provide data support and scientific guidance and improvement for the design of acoustic environment in elementary classrooms.