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- Stansfeld, S A, et al.
(author)
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Aircraft and road traffic noise and children's cognition and health: a cross-national study.
- 2005
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In: Lancet. - 1474-547X .- 0140-6736. ; 365:9475, s. 1942-9
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- BACKGROUND: Exposure to environmental stressors can impair children's health and their cognitive development. The effects of air pollution, lead, and chemicals have been studied, but there has been less emphasis on the effects of noise. Our aim, therefore, was to assess the effect of exposure to aircraft and road traffic noise on cognitive performance and health in children. METHODS: We did a cross-national, cross-sectional study in which we assessed 2844 of 3207 children aged 9-10 years who were attending 89 schools of 77 approached in the Netherlands, 27 in Spain, and 30 in the UK located in local authority areas around three major airports. We selected children by extent of exposure to external aircraft and road traffic noise at school as predicted from noise contour maps, modelling, and on-site measurements, and matched schools within countries for socioeconomic status. We measured cognitive and health outcomes with standardised tests and questionnaires administered in the classroom. We also used a questionnaire to obtain information from parents about socioeconomic status, their education, and ethnic origin. FINDINGS: We identified linear exposure-effect associations between exposure to chronic aircraft noise and impairment of reading comprehension (p=0.0097) and recognition memory (p=0.0141), and a non-linear association with annoyance (p<0.0001) maintained after adjustment for mother's education, socioeconomic status, longstanding illness, and extent of classroom insulation against noise. Exposure to road traffic noise was linearly associated with increases in episodic memory (conceptual recall: p=0.0066; information recall: p=0.0489), but also with annoyance (p=0.0047). Neither aircraft noise nor traffic noise affected sustained attention, self-reported health, or overall mental health. INTERPRETATION: Our findings indicate that a chronic environmental stressor-aircraft noise-could impair cognitive development in children, specifically reading comprehension. Schools exposed to high levels of aircraft noise are not healthy educational environments.
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- Eriksson, Mårten, et al.
(author)
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A screening version of the Swedish Communicative Development Inventories designed for use with 18-month-old children.
- 2002
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In: Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research. - : American Speech Language Hearing Association. - 1092-4388 .- 1558-9102. ; 46:5, s. 948-960
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- An instrument designed to assess young children's communicative skills at 18 months is described. The instrument consists of a 103-item parental report checklist based on the Swedish version of the Communicative Development Inventories (SECDI). We present descriptive data from a study at the Swedish Community Health Care Centres, including parental reports of 1021 18-month-old children. The response rate was 88%. Performance at the 10th percentile consisted of 8 communicative gestures, 45 comprehended words, and 7 spoken words. The overall results indicate that the instrument is reliable and has validity approximating that of the SECDI. Furthermore, parents of the children with the poorest vocabulary indicated approval of the assessment procedure in interviews especially directed to this group.
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- Westerlund, M., et al.
(author)
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A short-term follow-up of children with poor word production at the age of 18 months
- 2004
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In: Acta Paediatrica. - 0803-5253 .- 1651-2227. ; 93:5, s. 702-706
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Aim: (a) To study the stability of poor language development assessed by a new screening instrument based on parents' recognition of words their 18-mo-old children use; (b) to evaluate the predictability of the less-than-eight-words cut-off used by Child Health Centres (CHCs) in Sweden at the present 18-mo check-up--an assessment based on parents' recall of their children's vocabulary. Methods: All failures of the less-than-eight-words criterion, corresponding to about 10% of 1000 children from a community-based study, were followed up within half a year after the first assessment. The follow-up instrument was an extensive, internationally well-known and structured parent questionnaire, standardized for Swedish children. Results: Almost half of the followed-ups performed below the 10th percentile and more than two-thirds were found below the 20th percentile. Thus, after a few months about one-third of the children had caught up to a fairly normal level of performance. Two of the children who had recovered performed above median. More relaxed cut-off criteria were applied ad hoc , reducing the proportion of children with a fast recovery.
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