Educating Your Toddler: Background Noise Can Be A Hindrance To Learning

Toddlers have difficulty learning new words in the presence of background noise, according to the findings of a new study published in the journal Child Development. The study involved three experiments conducted on 106 toddlers aged 22 to 30 months.

"Modern homes are filled with noisy distractions such as TV, radio, and people talking that could affect how children learn words at early ages," said psychologist Brianna McMillan, as per Sky News. McMillan is a doctoral psychology student from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who led the study.

Background noise may hinder #toddlers' ability to learn #words https://t.co/MZN4zEPX32 @SRCDtweets

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Noisy Environments Imitated In Toddler Study

EurekAlert reported that the study imitated noisy environments that the toddler may be faced while they were at their homes or schools. The toddlers were grouped into three groups with 40 toddlers in the first two groups (one group composed of those aged 22 to 24 months and one group aged 28 to 30 months) and 26 toddlers in the last group.

The first two group learned new words when exposed to quieter background speech as opposed to louder background speech. The last group was exposed to two words in a quiet environment and then taught meanings of four words, two of which were the ones they were exposed to, in a noisy environment. The toddlers learned only those of which they head in a quiet environment.

Background Voices Impair Listening

Research earlier presented at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on February concurs with the result of McMillan and her team's study. According to CTV News, the research found that noise hinders how young children learn and one of the worst hurdles for them when listening is "other voices babbling in the background."

The researchers in this previous study had young children listen to recordings of people reading and talking. They tested how easily the children learned new words and detected familiar words when there was a new voice besides the one reading and talking heard. They reportedly found that when there was soft noise, the children recognized one person talking out of several ones doing so.