BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Is classroom noise always bad for children? The contribution of age and selective attention to creative performance in noise.

    Massonnié, Jessica and Rogers, Cathy Jane and Mareschal, Denis and Kirkham, Natasha Z. (2019) Is classroom noise always bad for children? The contribution of age and selective attention to creative performance in noise. Frontiers in Psychology , ISSN 1664-1078.

    [img] Text
    26204.pdf - Author's Accepted Manuscript
    Restricted to Repository staff only
    Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

    Download (920kB) | Request a copy
    [img]
    Preview
    Text
    26204a.pdf - Published Version of Record
    Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

    Download (1MB) | Preview

    Abstract

    Creativity is considered an important skill in learning but little is known about the environmental factors affecting it in classroom settings. Extending adult findings, this study assessed whether moderate multi-talker noise promotes children’s creativity, and whether this is moderated by children’s age, working memory, and selective attention. Forty-four elementary school children between 5 and 11 years of age, divided into younger and older age groups, participated in this within-subjects’ study. The children completed two idea generation tasks; each participant performed the task both in silence and in moderate (64dB) classroom noise. Selective attention skills, verbal and visuospatial working memory were assessed with behavioural tasks. Results showed that there were no conditions in which classroom noise promoted children’s creativity whilst some negative effects of noise were observed. Younger children (between 5 and 8 years of age) with low selective attention skills were especially at risk: they gave fewer ideas in the presence of noise, and these ideas were rated as less original. Children with good selective attention skills were globally protected against the effects of noise, performing similarly in silence and noise. Future studies about children’s specific creative strategies might help shed light on the mechanisms underlying these effects.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Classroom noise, executive functions, creativity, selective attention, working memory
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
    Depositing User: Jessica Massonnie
    Date Deposited: 12 Feb 2019 12:30
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:48
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/26204

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    0Downloads
    6 month trend
    0Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item Edit/View Item