14 DAY TRIAL // Göran Söderlund from Stockholm University, Sweden, worked with a team of researchers on the effects of white noise on schoolchildren, and found out that playing white noise in class can be helpful to inattentive children.
Noise is normally considered to be a negative element for cognitive performance, but when scientists considered the concept of stochastic resonance and dopamine related internal noise premises, a reasonable amount of noise is beneficial for inattentive children.
In other words, even if the performance of attentive children is likely to be affected by the white noise, the performance of inattentive kids would be enhanced.
The researchers tested the effect of meaningless random noise on 51 children, from a secondary school in Norway, and then challenged the kids to remember as many items as possible from a list read out, in either the presence or absence of white noise.
Söderlund concluded that “ there was significant improvement in performance for the children rated as inattentive by their teachers, and a significant decline in performance for those rated as attentive as noise levels were increased.
“This finding could have practical applications offering non-invasive and non-pharmacological help to improve school results in children with attentional problems,” he added.
The explanation that the scientists found is that the phenomenon called 'stochastic resonance' could be what allowed the improvement in the performance of inattentive children.
He says that “when a weak signal is presented below the hearing threshold it becomes detectable when random or white noise is added to the signal.
“Our study is the first to link noise and stochastic resonance to both higher cognitive functions and attention,” he adds.
The scientists concluded that cognitive performance can be influenced by external background white noise stimulation in a group of non-clinical inattentive participants.
They recommended further studies using more noise levels and added that if the results are positive, they could offer a way of improving school results in children with attentional problems.
The research was presented in BioMed Central's open access journal Behavioral and Brain Functions.