Quantifying the Effects of Background Speech Babble on Preschool Children's Novel Word Learning in a Multisession Paradigm: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Purpose This study tested the effects of background speech babble on novel word learning in preschool children with a multisession paradigm. Method Eight 3-year-old children were exposed to a total of 8 novel word–object pairs across 2 story books presented digitally. Each story contained 4 novel consonant–vowel–consonant nonwords. Children were exposed to both stories, one in quiet and one in the presence of 4-talker babble presented at 0-dB signal-to-noise ratio. After each story, children's learning was tested with a referent selection task and a verbal recall (naming) task. Children were exposed to and tested on the novel word–object pairs on 5 separate days within a 2-week span. Results A significant main effect of session was found for both referent selection and verbal recall. There was also a significant main effect of exposure condition on referent selection performance, with more referents correctly selected for word–object pairs that were presented in quiet compared to pairs presented in speech babble. Finally, children's verbal recall of novel words was statistically better than baseline performance (i.e., 0%) on Sessions 3–5 for words exposed in quiet, but only on Session 5 for words exposed in speech babble. Conclusions These findings suggest that background speech babble at 0-dB signal-to-noise ratio disrupts novel word learning in preschool-age children. As a result, children may need more time and more exposures of a novel word before they can recognize or verbally recall it.

COVID-19, Face Masks, and Social Interaction: How a Global Pandemic Is Shining a Light on the Importance of Face-to-Face Communication

“…Consistent with this idea, school-age children perform more poorly on comprehension tasks when speech is presented in background noise (Sullivan et al, 2015). Additionally, younger children learn fewer words when the target speech is degraded by background noise (Avivi-Reich et al, 2020;Han et al, 2019;McMillan & Saffran, 2016). These issues are particularly relevant for children who are attending in-person school, either full-time or part-time (e.g., as in some hybrid academic models), where the teacher and all of the students are required to wear face masks.…”

Children build their vocabularies in noisy environments: The necessity of a cross‐disciplinary approach to understand word learning

“…However, to understand the mechanisms through which background noise affects word learning, these classroom studies must be paired with dynamic experimental tasks during which we systematically alter the components of the background noise. Currently, there is notable, but limited research implementing these experimental word‐learning tasks in controlled background noise (Avivi‐Reich et al, 2020; Dombroski & Newman, 2014; Han et al, 2016, 2019; McMillan & Saffran, 2016; Pittman, 2008; Riley & McGregor, 2012). Some of these studies demonstrate negative effects of background noise on word learning.…”