Children's auditory working memory performance in degraded listening conditions

Area of Science:

• Auditory perception
• Cognitive psychology
• Child development

Background:

• Auditory working memory (AWM) is crucial for language comprehension and learning.
• Understanding how environmental noise affects AWM in children is important for educational settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if school-age children with typical hearing perform worse on auditory working memory tasks in multitalker babble noise compared to quiet.
• To determine if task cognitive demand influences performance differences in noise.

Main Methods:

• Twenty typically hearing children (8-10 years old) completed four auditory working memory tasks.
• Tasks were administered in quiet and in 4-talker babble noise at varying signal-to-noise ratios (0 dB and -5 dB).

Main Results:

• Auditory working memory performance significantly decreased in multitalker babble noise compared to quiet conditions.
• Children performed worse on tasks with higher storage and processing demands.
• Noise impacted all tasks similarly, irrespective of complexity.

Conclusions:

• Multitalker babble noise negatively affects auditory working memory performance in school-age children.
• Noise inhibits real-time auditory working memory processes, regardless of task complexity.