| 1. |
- Hurtig, Anders, et al.
(författare)
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Children's recall of words spoken in their first and second language : Effects of Signal-to-Noise Ratio and Reverberation Time
- 2016
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Psychology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-1078. ; 6:JAN
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Speech perception runs smoothly and automatically when there is silence in the background, but when the speech signal is degraded by background noise or by reverberation, effortful cognitive processing is needed to compensate for the signal distortion. Previous research has typically investigated the effects of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and reverberation time in isolation, whilst few have looked at their interaction. In this study, we probed how reverberation time and SNR influence recall of words presented in participants' first- (L1) and second-language (L2). A total of 72 children (10 years old) participated in this study. The to-be-recalled wordlists were played back with two different reverberation times (0.3 and 1.2 s) crossed with two different SNRs (+3 dBA and +12 dBA). Children recalled fewer words when the spoken words were presented in L2 in comparison with recall of spoken words presented in L1. Words that were presented with a high SNR (+12 dBA) improved recall compared to a low SNR (+3 dBA). Reverberation time interacted with SNR to the effect that at +12 dB the shorter reverberation time improved recall, but at +3 dB it impaired recall. The effects of the physical sound variables (SNR and reverberation time) did not interact with language. © 2016 Hurtig, Keus van de Poll, Pekkola, Hygge, Ljung and Sörqvist.
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| 2. |
- Hurtig, Anders, et al.
(författare)
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Recall of spoken words in English and Swedish heard at different signal-to-noise ratios and different reverberation times : Children aged 10-11 years
- 2015
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Noise impairs speech perception which in turn makes memory and learning more difficult. School children are expected to be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of noise. In this study we varied reverberation time (RT) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to see how they affected recall of words in Swedish (native tongue) and English. Participants were 72 children in the fourth grade who listened to wordlists presented in Swedish and English with broadband noise in the background. We compared two reverberation time (RT) conditions: a short RT (0.3 sec.) and a long RT (1.2 sec.), and two signal-to-noise (SNR) conditions: a low SNR (+3 dB) and a high SNR (+12 dB). Each wordlist had 8 words to be recalled. Main effects of language and SNR were found. Children could recall fewer words if they were presented in English or had a low SNR. Interactions were found between Language, RT, SNR and whether the words were at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of the wordlists. Recall performance was best with a short RT and a high SNR. Fourth graders recalled more words in their native language compared to English. Children might have difficulties with semantic association and understanding the meaning of words in English. Recall performance was markedly improved with good listening conditions, which indicates that there is something to be gained by improving the acoustical conditions in a classroom to improve memory and learning.
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| 3. |
- Hurtig, Anders, et al.
(författare)
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Student's second-language grade may depend on classroom listening position
- 2016
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 11:6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The purpose of this experiment was to explore whether listening positions (close or distant location from the sound source) in the classroom, and classroom reverberation, influence students’ score on a test for second-language (L2) listening comprehension (i.e., comprehension of English in Swedish speaking participants). The listening comprehension test administered was part of a standardized national test of English used in the Swedish school system. A total of 125 high school pupils, 15 years old, participated. Listening position was manipulated within subjects, classroom reverberation between subjects. The results showed that L2 listening comprehension decreased as distance from the sound source increased. The effect of reverberation was qualified by the participants’ baseline L2 proficiency. A shorter reverberation was beneficial to participants with high L2 proficiency, while the opposite pattern was found among the participants with low L2 proficiency. The results indicate that listening comprehension scores—and hence students’ grade in English—may depend on students’ classroom listening position.
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| 4. |
- Hurtig, Anders, et al.
(författare)
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Student’s second-language grade may depend on classroom listening position
- 2015
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This experiment explored whether position, close to or at a distance from the sound source, in the classroom, and the reverberation time in the classroom, influenced Swedish speaking participants’ score on a test for second-language (English) listening comprehension. The listening comprehension test administered was part of a standardized national test of English used in the Swedish school system. A total of 133 upper school pupils, 15 years old, participated. Listening position was manipulated within subjects and classroom reverberation time was varied between subjects. The results showed that English listening comprehension decreased with the distance from the sound source. Participants with higher proficiency scores for English were less susceptible to this effect. Classroom reverberation time had no significant main effect and it did not interact with listening position. The results indicate that listening comprehension scores – and hence students’ grade in English – may depend on their classroom listening position.
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| 5. |
- Hygge, Staffan, 1944-
(författare)
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Noise and cognition in children
- 2019
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Ingår i: Encyclopedia of Environmental Health. - : Elsevier. - 9780444639523 - 9780444639516 ; , s. 655-660
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Bokkapitel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Reading, memory, and learning are the cognitive processes in children that are most affected by noise exposure. Field studies of chronic noise exposure with adequate methodological controls and experimental studies of acute noise exposure both come to similar conclusions on how noise affects reading, memory, and learning of written material. The experimental studies also provide insights to the details of the causal link from noise exposure to impaired memory, in particular showing the importance of the immediate cognitive processing in working memory of the material to be read or memorized. It is expected that further advances in research on working memory will become an emerging theoretical perspective in the area of how noise affects children’s cognition. It is also expected that the current research on reading, memory, and learning of written material will be supplemented with more research on how spoken material is cognitively processed by children when exposed to noise. © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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| 6. |
- Hygge, Staffan, 1944-, et al.
(författare)
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Speech intelligibility and recall of first and second language words heard at different signal-to-noise ratios
- 2015
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Ingår i: Frontiers in Psychology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-1078. ; 6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Free recall of spoken words in Swedish (native tongue) and English were assessed in two signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions (+3 and +12 dB), with and without half of the heard words being repeated back orally directly after presentation [shadowing, speech intelligibility (SI)]. A total of 24 word lists with 12 words each were presented in English and in Swedish to Swedish speaking college students. Pre-experimental measures of working memory capacity (operation span, OSPAN) were taken. A basic hypothesis was that the recall of the words would be impaired when the encoding of the words required more processing resources, thereby depleting working memory resources. This would be the case when the SNR was low or when the language was English. A low SNR was also expected to impair SI, but we wanted to compare the sizes of the SNR-effects on SI and recall. A low score on working memory capacity was expected to further add to the negative effects of SNR and language on both SI and recall. The results indicated that SNR had strong effects on both SI and recall, but also that the effect size was larger for recall than for SI. Language had a main effect on recall, but not on SI. The shadowing procedure had different effects on recall of the early and late parts of the word lists. Working memory capacity was unimportant for the effect on SI and recall. Thus, recall appear to be a more sensitive indicator than SI for the acoustics of learning, which has implications for building codes and recommendations concerning classrooms and other workplaces, where both hearing and learning is important.
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| 7. |
- Hygge, Staffan, et al.
(författare)
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The effect of functional hearing loss and age on long- and short-term visuospatial memory: evidence from the UK Biobank resource: a longitudinal follow up
- 2015
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In a recent study (Rönnberg, Hygge, Keidser & Rudner, 2014) we reported cross-sectional epidemiological data from the UK Biobank, which in total contains >500,000 individuals in the UK. The focus in that study was on the effects of functional hearing loss and age on long- and short-term visuospatial memory. Our selection of variables resulted in a sub-sample of 138,098 participants after discarding extreme values.A digit triplets functional hearing test was used to divide the participants into three groups: poor, insufficient and normal hearers. We found negative relationships between functional hearing loss and both visuospatial working memory (i.e., a card pair matching task) and visuospatial, episodic long-term memory (i.e., a prospective memory task), with the strongest association for episodic long-term memory. The use of hearing aids showed a small positive effect for working memory performance for the poor hearers, but did not have any influence on episodic long-term memory. Age also showed strong main effects for both memory tasks and interacted with gender and education for the long-term memory task.Close to 20,000 of the original (>500,000) participants recently went through the very same test battery a second time, 2-7 years after the first time. In the present study, we will scrutinize in which respects the addition of extra years in the longitudinal analysis is commensurable with extra years from our previous cross-sectional analysis, for the same sets of original moderators and mediators.
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| 8. |
- Hygge, Staffan, 1944-
(författare)
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When and why does a long reverberation time improve comprehension and recall?
- 2017
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Ingår i: Proceedings 12th International Congress on Noise as a Public Health Problem (ICBEN), Zürich, Switzerland, 18-22 June, 2017.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In four recent experiments we have seen that a long reverberation time (RvT) may improve, rather than impair, comprehension and recall of spoken words or texts for participants who have limited language skills. A long RvT improved, rather than impaired, comprehension for Swedish pupils with a low proficiency in English reading when taking a grade 9 English listening comprehension test in their classroom. For those who were good at reading English there was a better recall with a short RvT. This crossover antagonistic interaction was replicated with Swedish college students grouped by their English proficiency reading skills. In two word list experiments with Swedish pupils in grade 4 and college students, English and Swedish words were presented with a long and short RvT and crossed with two signal-to-noise ratios. Also here there were indicators of a crossover interaction to the effects that along reverberation time improved, rather than impaired, the recall of the words for students that were on the low side of English language proficiency. Possible explanations will be discussed in the presentation.
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| 9. |
- Jahncke, Helena, 1982-, et al.
(författare)
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A cross-sectional study of alternations between physical and mental tasks
- 2016
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background. Health and well-being at work is generally assumed to be associated with sufficient physical and mental variation. Job rotation, where workers typically alternate between different physical tasks, is a popular initiative. Controlled experiments suggest that favourable effects are associated with alternations between mental and physical tasks, but little is known about this intervention in real work. The aims of this study were (1) to describe the occurrence of alternations between mental and physical tasks, and (2) to identify key determinants of such alternations.Method. We developed a questionnaire combining established questions with specific questions about alternations. Workers from two occupations (industrial and non-industrial blue-collar work), in jobs containing both physical and mental tasks, were included in the study. 122 (55 females) out of 293 workers approached at four companies answered the questionnaire.Results. On average, the workers alternated 3.5 times per day between mental and physical tasks. In the non-industrial companies, workers reported wanting more alternations than they had, while desired and actual alternations did not differ in the industrial companies. This effect of occupation on the difference between the number of alternations wanted and the actual alternations available was significant (p < 0.001). Furthermore, there was a general preference for performing a physical task after a mental task, and vice versa. This main effect of primarily performed task type (i.e. either physical or mental) on preferred subsequent task type was significant (p < 0.001). In a univariate analysis, gender appeared to be a strong determinant of the occurrence of alternations, but the effect was absorbed when adding the occupation variable.Discussion. Within the studied companies, work offered alternations between mental and physical tasks and there was a preference among workers to alternate between tasks. Occupation rather than gender was a key determinant of the number of alternations reported.
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| 10. |
- Jahncke, Helena, 1982-, et al.
(författare)
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Variation at work : alternations between physically and mentally demanding tasks in blue-collar occupations
- 2017
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Ingår i: Ergonomics. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0014-0139 .- 1366-5847. ; 60:9, s. 1218-1227
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aims of this questionnaire study were to describe the occurrence and desired number of alternations between mental and physical tasks in industrial and non-industrial blue-collar work, and determine to which extent selected personal and occupational factors influence these conditions. On average, the 122 participating workers (55 females) reported to have close to four alternations per day between mental and physical tasks, and to desire more alternations than they actually had. They also expressed a general preference for performing a physical task after a mental task and vice versa. In univariate regression models, the desired change in task alternations was significantly associated with Gender, Age, Occupation, Years with current work tasks, and Perceived job control, while Occupation was the only significant determinant in a multiple regression model including all factors. Our results suggest that alternations between productive physical and mental tasks could be a viable option in future job rotation.
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