Classroom acoustics and cognition: review of the effects of noise and reverberation on primary school children

What the study found

Noise and reverberation can impair speech perception, memory, attention and learning, with children especially vulnerable.

Limitations

Study designs and acoustic metrics vary; developmental and language differences can modify effects.

Neurodesign interpretation

For children, poor acoustics can transform a lesson into an additional auditory-decoding task before learning even begins.

Possible design implications

Lower reverberation and improve signal-to-noise conditions in learning spaces, especially for younger students and language learners.

Why it stays in the corpus

Retain as a child-focused classroom acoustics synthesis.

Study design

Review

Population

Primary school children

Setting

Classrooms

Field

Educational environments, acoustics

Mechanism

Speech perception, attention, learning

Spatial variable

Noise, reverberation, classroom acoustics

Keywords

classroom, reverberation, children, learning, speech