The students who were exposed to the highest level of noise pollution at school had slower improvements in memory and attention.
Carissa Wong is a person.
Children are walking into school.
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The development of a child's attention span and short-term memory can be adversely affected by road traffic noise.
Studies show that noise pollution from road traffic can affect sleep. Local aircraft noise has been shown to affect children's performance in school. It wasn't known if road traffic noise outside schools affects cognitive development.
Maria Foraster and her colleagues at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health recruited over two thousand children from 38 schools in Barcelona.
The noise coming in from the outside was measured by the researchers at each school. The baseline level of noise pollution was calculated six months later.
The team tested the children's short-term memory and attention every three months.
The children in schools with higher average indoor noise levels saw a slower improvement in their performance on tests compared to their peers at the end of the year.
It was found that a higher level of fluctuation in indoor noise levels was associated with a slower improvement of both working memory and attention.
Stephen Stansfeld at Queen Mary University of London was not involved in the research. He says children are more likely to notice noise fluctuations. It is possible that attention to noise may interfere with their attention to other tasks.
The levels of local air pollution were accounted for in the analysis.
Stansfeld says that they have adjusted for a wide range of potential confounders in their analyses.
Further research with a more diverse group of people is needed. The sample of families involved in the study were better educated than the rest of the population.
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