Students' Math Performance Disrupted by Noise Outside the Classroom

A new study focusing on teenage students examines the role of noise pollution in performing mathematical calculations, an issue that can be important in classroom design and in providing an appropriate learning environment.

When evaluating the quality of education in schools, factors such as the content of textbooks, the teaching style of teachers, the size of classes, and physical facilities are usually considered. However, the educational environment is a wider set of conditions that can affect the behavior, concentration and performance of students and teachers. One of these conditions is the sound condition of the class and the amount of noise in it.

According to Ambassador Arjan, schools may be exposed to internal sounds, such as students' conversations and the noise of corridors, and external sounds, such as the movement of vehicles or construction operations. These sounds can make it difficult for the normal flow of teaching, to hear the teacher's words, and for the students to concentrate. Therefore, paying attention to the listening environment of the school is an important part of the effort to improve the quality of education.

Children spend a significant part of their waking hours at school interacting with their teachers and classmates. Oral communication is also one of the main foundations of education, and the student must be able to hear the teacher's speech at the same time, keep the information in mind and use it to solve the problem. Increased background noise may impair sentence recognition, reading comprehension, attention, and short-term memory or "working memory."

Working memory is the part of the mental ability that stores information for a short period of time so that a person can perform an activity such as calculating, reading, or solving problems. Tasks that require more information processing, logical reasoning, and concentration are likely to be more sensitive to noise. For this reason, investigating the effect of noise types on math calculations can provide a clearer picture of the consequences of noise pollution in the classroom.

In this context, Leila Majidinejad, a researcher of the Environmental Management Department of the Science and Research Unit of the Islamic Azad University, along with three fellow university colleagues and with the support of the Tehran University of Medical Sciences, conducted a study on the relationship between noise pollution and the mental performance of students.

In simple language, they investigated how the presence of common sounds in educational environments, when solving mathematical calculations, has anything to do with the speed of answering, the accuracy of calculations, and the mental efficiency of students. The researchers also evaluated different types of sound separately to determine whether the nature of the sound, for example conversation, traffic or construction, could change the intensity of the effect.

To carry out this research, a mental calculation task was given to 100 students aged 11 to 14 in the classroom environment. The participants included 46 girls and 54 boys. Students were exposed to three different types of sounds while performing math calculations: conversational and noisy sounds, vehicle sounds, and construction machinery and equipment sounds. The level of each of these sounds was considered 75 dB with the "dBA" scale.

This scale expresses sound intensity according to the sensitivity of the human ear. The researchers compared the time required to complete the test and the number of correct answers in different measuring conditions and with background noise or quieter conditions, and students' performance was also evaluated at different levels of mental difficulty.

The results showed that there is a significant relationship between noise pollution, task completion time and computational accuracy. The students in the background sound mode completed the test in an average of 791.71 seconds. This time reached 808.08 seconds in the presence of traffic noise, 841.16 seconds with conversation noise, and 954.01 seconds with construction noise. Therefore, the construction noise increased the response time by about 20% compared to the background noise and had the most negative effect on the task performance speed.

A decrease in accuracy was also observed, especially in the presence of construction noise and conversation. In the answer section related to the correct number, humming reduced the number of correct answers by 13% and construction noise by 17.9%. In the first decimal place, the decrease in accuracy was 19.8% in the conversation condition and 22.6% in the construction condition. For the second decimal place, the drop of correct answers was reported by 21.3 and 22.4%, respectively. The sound of traffic also weakened the performance, but its effect was milder than the other two sounds, and of course, there was no significant difference between the reaction of girls and boys.

These findings show that the loudness of the voice is not the only determining factor and its type and pattern are also important. Traffic noise usually has a more uniform and stable temporal pattern, but conversational noise contains speech variations and segments that can inadvertently attract the student's attention. In such a situation, the mind devotes part of its limited capacity to processing the surrounding sound, and less resources are left to calculate, store numbers in memory, and find answers.

This state of increasing "cognitive load" is called; That is, the mind endures more pressure to manage simultaneous stimuli. This problem can explain why the hum, despite being familiar, has reduced the accuracy and speed of calculations.

Construction noise also disrupts concentration more than continuous sounds due to its fluctuation, intensity and unpredictability. The importance of these results is that school noise pollution is not just an annoying factor and can be related to concentration, memory and quality of homework.

Based on the suggestions made in the research, more appropriate design of educational spaces, use of sound insulation and choosing the right place to build schools can reduce the exposure of students to disturbing sounds. The attention of educational administrators and policymakers to the audio infrastructure of classrooms can also help to provide an environment where students are less pressured to listen, concentrate and solve problems.

The scientific research article related to this research has been published in "Sustainability, Development and Environment Quarterly". This publication is affiliated with the Association of Environmental Experts of Iran and is published in cooperation with the Faculty of Environment and Energy, Science and Research Unit of Islamic Azad University.