Journal of Environmental Psychology (2000) 20, 91^97 0272 - 4944/00/010091 + 07 $35.

00/0
# 2000 Academic Press
doi:10.1006/jevp.1999.0144, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

THE EFFECTS OF NOISE ON PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN' S

PRE-READING SKILLS

LORRAINE E. MAXWELL AND GARY W. EVANS

Cornell University, NY, U.S.A.

Abstract

Previous research has shown a link between chronic noise exposure and reading skills. Elementary school-age
children are thought to be negatively a¡ected by such exposure. A limited amount of work has been done on
the e¡ects of chronic noise on pre-school children, and such work has primarily focused on attentional skills.
A cohort model was used in this study to examine the e¡ects of chronic noise on pre-school children's pre-
reading skills. All of the children attended the same child care center. Ninety 4 and 5 -year-old children were
tested on cognitive measures of pre-reading skills and were rated by classroom teachers on their understand-
ing and use of language. Children were tested in year one, before sound attenuation work in the classrooms,
and in year two, after the installation of sound absorbent panels. In the quieter condition, children scored
higher than their noisier cohort on the letter^number^word recognition measure and were rated higher by
their teachers on the language scale. In addition, children in the quieter classrooms were less susceptible than
those in the noisy classrooms to induced helplessness. # 2000 Academic Press

Introduction tion of a day care center in order to rectify the

There is a considerable amount of literature docu-
menting the e¡ects of ambient noise (e.g. aircraft)
on school-aged children (Evans & Lepore, 1993). The
¢ndings indicate that academic achievement, in par-
ticular reading skills, are vulnerable to the e¡ects
of chronic noise exposure. A recent study suggests
that a possible intervening mechanism linking
noise and reading is language acquisition (Evans &
Maxwell, 1997). Speci¢cally, ¢rst and second grade
children exposed to chronic noise scored lower on
a reading test and on a test of speech recognition.
The primary objectives of the present study are: (1)
to investigate whether the relationships between
noise, language acquisition, and subsequent ability
to read appear earlier in a child's development, spe-
ci¢cally, how pre-school children's acquisition of
language and pre-reading skills are a¡ected by ex-
posure to chronic noise; (2) rather than examine ex-
ternal transportation noise sources (e.g. aircraft,
trains) as in prior studies (Evans & Lepore, 1993),
the present study examines the e¡ects of poor inter-
ior acoustics in a daycare center. We were fortunate
to be able to take advantage of a naturally occur-
ring experiment a¡orded by the acoustical renova-
original, unacceptable poor acoustic qualities of
the building.
Children begin to acquire language skills related
to reading before they begin formal reading instruc-
tion. A developmental hierarchy appears to exist in
the way children learn to read. In order to be able to
read, children must ¢rst learn to recognize the let-
ters of the alphabet, as well as the fact that letters,
when put together, form words. Children also learn
the symbolic nature of words; that words can be la-
bels for things, feelings, and thoughts. Furthermore,
children must learn the relationship between the
sounds of speech and the way those sounds are re-
presented in the printed word. Therefore, children
need to have practice in both seeing and hearing
words (Mason, 1980).
To date, there have not been any studies that ex-
amine the relationship between noise and pre-read-
ing skills in pre-school children. Some related work
with this age group has investigated attentional
skills. Four-year-old children in noisy day care cen-
ters performed better in noisy conditions on a
matching task; whereas children in quiet centers
performed better in quiet conditions (Hambrick-
Dixon, 1986). Thus, perhaps young children adapt to
92 L. E. Maxwell and G. W. Evans
their surroundings (ambient conditions), and young
children in noisy surroundings are less a¡ected by
acute noise. Heft (1979) reported similar ¢ndings
for kindergarten children exposed to irrelevant
speech during a visual discrimination task. In Heft's
study, children from noisy homes were less dis-
tracted during the task than children from quiet
homes. Work by Cohen and colleagues (1980, 1986),
however, indicates that over time (or as children
age) children exposed to chronically noisy settings
may lose any short-term advantage they had over
children from quieter settings when performing a
task under acute noise conditions.
Taken together, these ¢ndings suggest that
chronic noise may negatively a¡ect children as
young as 4 years old, but that the consequences are
not evident until several years later. One explana-
tion for why pre-school children accustomed to a
noisy environment are not distracted by noise dur-
ing a task, is that they may learn to screen out po-
tentially distracting stimuli. Children from quiet
environments do not have to learn that skill. How-
ever, as children age and remain in noisy environ-
ments, the ability to screen out increases. Evidence
from three studies suggests that older children
chronically exposed to loud noise over-generalize
this `tuning out' coping strategy. In the ¢rst study,
elementary aged children living above a major inter-
state highway evidenced poorer auditory discrimina-
tion (i.e. ability to discriminate between similar
sounding words) as a function of the noise levels in
their apartment (Cohen et al., 1973). Cohen et al.
(1986) found that children attending elementary
schools in the £ight path of the Los Angeles
International Airport had di¤culty, relative to
well-matched, quiet school children, in selecting
the optimum signal to noise ratio in a listening
task. Finally, Evans et al. (1995) conceptually repli-
cated the Los Angeles ¢ndings in Europe with a si-
milar task. All of the above studies tested children
under carefully controlled quiet conditions and had
pre-screened children for normal auditory thresh-
olds. Perhaps children `learn' to screen out too much
stimuli in general, or important cues in particular,
that are useful with academic-type tasks in the ele-
mentary school years.
One of the stimuli children may screen out is
speech. If pre-school children in noisy settings are
good at screening out speech, what, if any, relation
does this have to the acquisition of language?
Children acquire language in the context of develop-
ment in social interaction. In other words, a major
impetus to acquiring language is to be able to com-
municate with other people (Bloom, 1997). Commu-
nicating involves both speaking and listening to
the speech of others. If children are learning to
screen out others' speech, what e¡ect does this have
on their acquisition of language and pre-reading
skills? Are there other cues related to pre-reading
skills in noisy environments besides speech that
children tune out?
The psycholinguistic and reading literature indi-
cates that learning to read is strongly related to
speech perception (Brady et al., 1983) and phoneme
recognition in particular (Wagner & Torgesen, 1987;
Mann and Brady, 1988). Brady et al. (1983) demon-
strated that speech recognition signi¢cantly discri-
minates between good and poor third grade readers.
Tunmer and Chapman (1995) found that good read-
ers-to-be are more sensitive to the spelling of words
and to the phonological mapping of words, in com-
parison to poor readers-to-be. Adams et al. (1997), in
a recent review, concludes that there is a link be-
tween children's ability to sound out words and the
likelihood of learning to read. The more successful
children are at understanding the sound structure
of words, the better chance they have of becoming
good readers.
The literature on noise and reading establishes a
clear link between exposure to noise and poor read-
ing skills (Evans & Lepore, 1993). In addition, noise
interferes with language acquisition skills in elemen-
tary school-aged children. It has also been demon-
strated that the acquisition of language skills are
related to reading skills. Noise may have a major im-
pact on important developmental processes related
to both language acquisition and reading. Thus, it be-
comes critical to understand whether young, pre-
school children's abilities to seemingly adapt to noisy
situations may interfere with acquiring the necessary
skills related to language and reading.
The present study examines the relation between
exposure to chronic noise and pre-reading skills in
pre-school-aged children. It builds on ¢ndings from
both the noise literature, and from the reading and
psycholinguistic literature. We hypothesize that chil-
dren in a noisy setting will have poorer pre-reading
skills than those in a quieter one. Pre-reading skills
include recognition of letters, numbers, simple
words, symbols, phoneme recognition, and story
comprehension. We also hypothesize that noise will
have a negative e¡ect on the developmentally appro-
priate use of language, as rated by teachers. In ad-
dition to direct, language-related impacts in
reading, noise exposure is stressful (Evans & Cohen,
1987), elevates psychophysiological stress indices,
creates tension and annoyance, strains inter-
personal relationships, and disrupts complex task
 The E¡ects of Noise on Pre-School Children's Pre-Reading Skills
performance. There is also evidence that uncontrol-
lable noise, in particular, can cause motivational
de¢cits, resembling learned helplessness (Glass &
Singer, 1972; Cohen et al., 1986; Peterson et al., 1993).
Therefore, we also examine whether pre-schoolers
chronically exposed to noise are more prone to moti-
vational de¢cits related to helplessness.
Method
Subjects
Ninety children participated in the study; 48 in the
¢rst year of the study and 42 in the second year.
There were 36 boys (18 in each year) and 54 girls
(30 in year one and 24 in year two). All of the chil-
dren were in pre-school (3 and 4 years old) or pre-
kindergarten (4 and 5 years old) classes. The mean
age of the children was 55 months ( 4 years, 7
months), with a range of 44 months to 69 months.
Four classrooms participated in the study. Class
sizes ranged from 17 to 18 children in the pre-school
classrooms and 23 children in the pre-kindergarten
classrooms, with two teachers in each room.
The children in each of the noise conditions were
from families of similar backgrounds. The mean in-
come range was U.S. $50,000^$60,000, and the mean
years of schooling completed indicated that both
parents either attended or graduated from college.
Procedure
A cohort model was used in this study. Measures
were taken in year 1, the noisy condition, and in
year 2 after the installation of sound absorbent pa-
nels in the classroom ceilings. Testing was done in
March and April of each year. The testing took ap-
proximately 40 minutes and was done over a 2 day
period so as not to fatigue the children. Testing
was done in a separate room away from the main
activity and noise of the classroom, so only the tes-
ter and the child were present.
Children were tested on three cognitive pre-read-
ing measures: (1) number and letter recognition, (2)
letter^sound correspondence, and (3) rhyming.1 The
¢rst measure consists of items such as identifying
the number representing the child's age, naming let-
ters (a, i, e), and a simple word, `mama'. The second
measure consists of pictures of familiar items (belt,
rope, doll), and the child is asked to point to the let-
ter that makes the sound of the ¢rst letter of each
word (`b' would be the correct answer for `belt'). In
the third measure, the child is given a target word
93
and is asked to choose from three words that rhyme
with the target word. The measures were derived
from two standardized tests, the TERA-2 (Test of
Early Reading Ability, 2nd edn, Reid et al., 1989)
and the MRT6 (Metropolitan Readiness Tests, 6th
edn, Woodcock, 1987).
Each child was also rated by the classroom tea-
cher on a language scale. The language scale con-
tained four items on which a child was rated as
either `adequate', `could use help', or `de¢nitely needs
help'. The items asked about the child's (1) ability to
understand when spoken to, (2) amount of age-ap-
propriate language used, (3) use of sentences, and
(4) ability to make him/herself understood by others.
The alpha for these items was 0
80, therefore the
items were treated as a scale.
A helplessness measure was also used in the
study. To test for this concept children were given
an unsolvable jigsaw puzzle (geometric shapes with
5 pieces) to set up a frustrating situation. The chil-
dren worked on the puzzle until they gave up (or a
maximum of 2
5 minutes given the young age of the
children). The children were then presented with a
moderately di¤cult but solvable jigsaw puzzle and
permitted to work for a maximum of 4 minutes. It
was hypothesized that children in the noisy condi-
tion would be more likely to give up on the solvable
puzzle after having experienced a situation in which
they were unsuccessful.
The study was conducted in a child care center
located in a small town. The child care center was
not near any major external noise source. The noise
levels were generated by people within the building
and a consequence of poor acoustical design. The
center was speci¢cally designed for child care and
serves children from infant to 5 years old. The class-
rooms used in this project had ceiling heights in ex-
cess of 12 feet. The ceilings and walls did not always
meet at right angles, and in some cases the walls
did not go completely to the ceiling, thereby allow-
ing sounds to drift from one room to an adjacent
space. (See Figures 1 and 2.) Only a small area of
each room was carpeted. Each room had window
space and two doors, one of which was glass and
led to the outdoor play area. Peak and average Leg
noise readings were obtained by placing a decibel
meter (B & K model #2236) in each classroom for
4 hours during similar classroom activity periods.
To the extent possible, the microphone was placed
at the same height and orientation in each room.
In the second year after noise attenuation treat-
ment, each of the classrooms had lower peak and
average Leg noise levels. Table 1 indicates both aver-
age and peak decibel levels in each test year.
94 L. E. Maxwell and G. W. Evans

FIGURE 1. The classroom before installation of sound absorbent FIGURE 2. The classroom after installation of sound absorbent
panels. panels.

Results Discussion

Children performed better in the quieter condition
on two of the cognitive measures. In the quieter
condition, children answered more of the questions
correctly on the measure of pre-reading skills re-
quiring recognition of numbers, letters, and simple
words (t ˆ 2
48, df. ˆ 88, p ˆ 0
007). Children in the
quieter condition were rated on the language scale
by their teachers as using and understanding lan-
guage better than the cohort in the noisier class-
rooms (t ˆ 2
85, df. ˆ 88, p ˆ 0
002). No signi¢cant
di¡erences were found for the rhyming measure
(t ˆ 0
50, df. ˆ 88, p ˆ 0
616), or for the letter^sound
correspondence measure (t ˆ 0
59, df. ˆ 88, p ˆ
0
554). Table 2 contains the ¢ndings for the t-test
for independent samples used for these measures.2
After working on the unsolvable puzzle, children
in the quieter classrooms (M ˆ 1
84 minutes) solved
the second, solvable puzzle signi¢cantly faster than
their noisy cohort (M ˆ 2
43 minutes), (t ˆ 2
28,
df. ˆ 88, p ˆ 0
012).
The results of this study indicate that chronic expo-
sure to high noise levels a¡ects pre-school children's
language and pre-reading skills. There were signi¢-
cant di¡erences on one objective measure of pre-
reading skills and on the teacher's subjective rating
of children's use of language. In addition, children
in noisy classrooms took longer to solve a challen-
ging puzzle immediately following work on an un-
solvable one. These di¡erences held up even when
children who participated in the study the ¢rst year
were removed from the analysis since they might
TABLE 1
Average and peak decibel levels in the classroom in each test
year.
Average decibel level Peak decibel level
M (S.D.) M (S.D.)
Year 1 75
92 (0
51) 95
50 (1
37)
Year 2 70
90 (1
19) 89
26 (2
87)
 The E¡ects of Noise on Pre-School Children's Pre-Reading Skills
T-test results for independent samples used in each of the measures.
Recognition-letters Language Rating Scale
numbers, words M (S.D.)
M (S.D.)*
Year 1 (n ˆ 48) 1
44 (0
30)
Year 2 (n ˆ 42) 1
30 (0
26)
*1 ˆ correct responses to questions, 2 ˆ incorrect.
have remembered the puzzle. The insolvable puzzle
¢ndings suggest that children may be more prone
to the induction of helplessness in noisy settings.
This is consistent with prior research (Evans &
Lepore, 1993), which was restricted to aircraft noise.
Three objective measures of pre-reading skills
were used in this study; however, signi¢cant di¡er-
ences between the two noise conditions were found
only for the recognition measure. No signi¢cant dif-
ferences were found for the rhyming and the letter^
sound correspondence measures. Children in the
quieter condition were better at recognizing letters,
numbers, and simple words. Reading researchers re-
port that pre-readers' letter knowledge is the single
best predictor of ¢rst-year reading achievement, and
the ability to auditorily discriminate phonemes
ranks second (Bond & Dykstra, 1967; Chall, 1967;
Adams et al., 1997).
Mason's (1980) research indicates that initial
reading skills are marked by pre-school children's
acquisition of the concepts of letters as symbols
and printed words as labels for objects. This skill
seems to be the ¢rst to appear in the process of
learning to read. The skills related to letter^sound
correspondence, and phoneme recognition and ma-
nipulation develop later. Mason's research demon-
strated that over a 9 -month period, pre-school
children with letter and label-recognition skills be-
gan to acquire letter^sound correspondence skills.
Children who already had more of the latter skills
improved those skills; none of the children re-
gressed in skill level indicating that the letter and
label recognition skills precede the letter^sound
correspondence skill.
An interesting question raised by this study's
¢ndings is why letter-recognition skills were sensi-
tive to changes in noise levels. Children become fa-
miliar with letters, labels, and symbols by being
exposed to them and noticing them. Parents, tea-
chers, and caregivers often help to make children
aware of these items in their environment. The
classroom environment remained relatively constant
in the availability and amount of pre-reading and
95
TABLE 2
Rhyming Letter-S and correspondence
M (S.D.)* M (S.D.)*
4
54 (1
17) 1
31 (0
25) 1
57 (0
25)
4
02 (0
15) 1
28 (0
31) 1
60 (0
28)
print-related materials. In addition, since the chil-
dren were from similar socio-economic back-
grounds, there does not seem to be any reason to
assume that the availability of print-related materials
or reading activities in the homes were signi¢cantly
di¡erent in the two groups. The question then re-
mains why di¡erences were found on this measure.
One explanation might be related to children's at-
tentional abilities. Previous research (Heft, 1979;
Cohen et al., 1980, 1986; Hambrick-Dixon, 1986) indi-
cates that pre-school children accustomed to noisy
situations can complete tasks while exposed to
noise. They seem to be able to do this because they
screen out distracting stimuli. Perhaps children in
the noisier classrooms in this study were simply too
overloaded with auditory stimuli to notice the cues in
the classroom environment that related to letter and
label recognition. In other words, in order to pay at-
tention to speci¢c play activities children may have
screened out other stimuli such as various visual
cues. The study also suggests that young children's
abilities to concentrate on a task may be a¡ected by
noise, because children in the quieter classrooms
completed the solvable puzzle in less time than those
in the noisy classrooms. The second group of children
may have developed better attentional skills.
Children's use of language was better in the qui-
eter classrooms based on ratings by their teachers.
Children in the quieter conditions were more likely
to speak in complete sentences, they were better un-
derstood by others, and they understood what was
said to them. Kryter (1985) states that steady noise
at 45 dBA or peak noise (aircraft, cars) at 55 dBA
will interfere with speech communication. Decibel
levels were higher than both of these levels in the
quieter classrooms; however, teachers reported that
there were less echoes in the classrooms after the
acoustical panels were installed. The panel installa-
tion was accompanied by a 5 dBA drop in the aver-
age noise levels (Leq). A drop of 10 decibels is
experienced as a halving of noise, so a 5 dBA shift
is substantial. While overall decibel levels were still
high in the quieter classrooms, less echo probably
96 L. E. Maxwell and G. W. Evans
made it easier to orally communicate. Not only
could teachers better understand children, but chil-
dren could also better understand each other. This
may have encouraged the children to speak to each
other more and in more complex sentences. In retro-
spect, reverberation time should also have been
measured; future research should incorporate these
measures.
Reading researchers (Brady et al., 1983; Mann &
Brady, 1988) have found that children who are sensi-
tive to the phonological mapping of words are more
likely to be better readers. The present study sug-
gests that in the presence of chronic noise, pre-
school children may not use oral skills as much or
pay attention to oral and other pre-reading cues in
the environment. Earlier work by Evans and Max-
well (1997) found that school-aged children who
had poor speech perception skills due to chronic
noise exposure were also poorer readers. Taken to-
gether, these two studies suggest a developmental
sequence. Children exposed to chronic noise use
language less, pick up fewer language cues, and de-
velop poor speech perception skills. These skills are
critical to the development of reading skills.
This study examined the relationship between
noise and pre-reading skills. Previous research with
pre-school-aged children looked at attentional skills
(Hambrick-Dixon, 1986). This research is also unique
in that it's focus is on interior acoustical elements
of a building, as opposed to external noise sources
such as airports, trains, or truck tra¤c. Acoustical
problems can more easily be corrected than site
problems once construction is completed; however,
as demonstrated in this study, with the installation
of sound absorbent panels, such renovations may
not always completely solve the problem.
The results of this study suggest that designers
must give considerable attention to acoustical fea-
tures (i.e. shape of rooms, height of ceilings,
¢nishes, adjacencies) of facilities used by young chil-
dren. The participating classrooms were visually in-
teresting spaces. Not all windows were rectangular,
sinks had plexiglass plumbing allowing the children
to see where the water goes, and the ceilings were
not typical institutional ones (i.e. ceiling tiles).
Structural beams were exposed and the ceilings
were not parallel to the £oor. The number of hard
surfaces, and the height and design of the ceilings
however, contributed to a noisy classroom.
Designers may be tempted not to provide a `plain,
vanilla box' as a classroom; however, creative spaces
in child care settings should not be at the expense
of acoustical comfort. To do so may have program
implications as well as consequences for certain
types of learning. In addition to the classroom pro-
blems already described, the dining area for the old-
er children was not usable for meal service because
the noise generated a¡ected adjacent infant/toddler
rooms. The younger children were not able to sleep
while the older children ate in the dining area. The
dining area had a ceiling height in excess of 14 feet,
window space covering one wall, and a walk way
above the dining area (which children were not per-
mitted to use). This provides an interesting space to
look at, but a space that was not able to be used as
part of the childcare program. In addition, since the
classrooms had not been designed for mealtime ac-
tivities, the rooms had to be adapted by the teachers
for this purpose. A moderate amount of complexity
is desirable in childcare settings, but complexity
should enhance the childcare programme and not
detract from it.
This study has demonstrated that there is a link
between interior chronic noise levels and pre-read-
ing skills in pre-school children. Children's use of,
and understanding of, language is poorer in loud
classrooms. Additionally, one of the earliest and
most fundamental of pre-reading skills, letter/num-
ber recognition, is adversely a¡ected. As in previous
research with older children (Evans & Maxwell,
1997), the critical role of language in acquiring
reading skills is disrupted by loud noise. We also
provide evidence that there may be adverse motiva-
tional consequences of chronic noise exposure
among pre-schoolers.
To date, the research related to noise and reading
has been cross-sectional and therefore, developmen-
tal trends in language and reading skills can only
be implied. Additional longitudinal work is needed
to con¢rm this relationship. Future work should
also observe actual language use under various
acoustic conditions, both among children as well
as between children and their teacher(s) and/or
parent(s).
Notes
Reprint requests and correspondence addressed should be
to: Lorraine Maxwell, Design and Environmental Analy-
sis, Martha Van Rensellaer Hall, Cornell University, Itha-
ca, NY 14853- 4401, U.S.A.
We are especially grateful to the children, teachers, and
administrative personnel of The Corning Children's
Center of Corning, NY who participated in this project
for their interest and support of this work. Shannon John-
son, Megan Lynam, Rahsaan Maxwell, Jennifer Melny-
chuk, Christina Sun, and Manuel Velez assisted in data
collection and analysis. Preparation of this article was
supported by Hatch grants NY 327-7408 & 327- 6408 from
 The E¡ects of Noise on Pre-School Children's Pre-Reading Skills
the USDA, and by the National Institute for Child Health
and Human Development, IF33H008973 - 01.
(1) Two other pre-reading measures were also used, but
both proved to be unreliable and therefore were not in-
cluded in the analysis.
(2) A small number of the children (12) participated in the
study both years. The above analyses were re-run for each
measure without the repeated children and as a repeated
measures for the within group di¡erences. The ¢ndings
for each measure remained signi¢cant. Statistical con-
trols for parental education and household income made
no di¡erence in statistical signi¢cance as expected, given
the general homogeneity of the sample population.
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