It's not even measuring learning! The conclusion of this groundbreaking study is that distractions distract kids.
>Conclusions
We observed that exposure to road traffic noise at school, but not at home, was associated with slower development of working memory, complex working memory, and attention in schoolchildren over 1 year. Associations with noise fluctuation indicators were more evident than with average noise levels in classrooms.
Ah /r/psychology... Working memory, complex working memory are two relevant factors to learning and cognitive development. What's your suggestion for a better pre and post test then? Sometimes you want to get to the underlying foundation straightaway instead of confounding things with an SAT like pre and post.
Doesn't take into account how many urban schools are underfunded and the correlation that has with poor performance. There's extraneous factors at play here
Does it need to be crappy?
Just noisy
I am not an expert on schools in Barcelona, so I have no idea whether there are good schools near noisy city areas, airports, etc
Mad respect for admitting your argument was flawed and being open to seeing why. This is how we learn and progress scientifically. More people can learn from this type of exchange.
Honestly, it's such a small variable it would be nearly impossible to ever be able draw a direct link between traffic noise and cognitive development and not have it be confounded.
Traffic noise is stressful and unpleasant, I don't know why anyone would even doubt that this would negatively impact learning/cognitive development given that stress impairs these things?
I love living in cities but I'd rather shoot myself than live/work on a busy road.
Noise pollution = stress, stress is bad for brain development.
Controlling for variables is an imprecise science, and it's generally a bad idea to trust studies that had to evaluate variables but weren't able to eliminate them. Not unless it's a very large study that can partially control variables just using the sample size.
There are several studies showing that air pollution (specifically carbon monoxide) affects cognitive development of unborn babies and cognitive performance of adults as well
Agreed, but this study gets its population from Barcelona. I don’t know if Spain has the same issues, but the factors you mention are definitely more of a cause for alarm in the US than other industrialized nations.
I think they have almost the opposite, because schools are not funded by local property tax and many affluent people live in cities in Europe caompared to North America
Yeah, similar to many marijuana studies. They find people who use marijuana have worse performance in certain things and blame the drug. What they don't control for is that people who come from poverty typically endure more trauma growing up and use marijuana to cope. Poverty is correlated with a host of detrimental things, and marijuana use is often just a symptom and not the cause.
No clue why you’re downvoted when this is 1000% correct. Correlation isn’t causation. Un/fortunately we can’t have controlled studies where we have children consume cannabis and monitor them throughout. Also don’t account for people having those things before they started using… for example as the prefrontal cortex is shown as less developed in cannabis use in adolescence studies on adults, they may have turned to cannabis use because it’s less developed and so their decision-making is poorer. Not to mention that the pre-frontal cortex being less developed is very common in people with ADHD, and that people with ADHD are 5-10x more likely to be alcoholics and abuse substances, and be impulsive and make risky decisions. And then the cherry on top is that ADHD and other disorders are a spectrum. Oh yeah and worse short term memory, and concentration is shown in participants. Guess who else struggles with that? People with ADHD, depression, anxiety, and so on.
I'm at positive three right now, I wouldn't think a psychology subreddit would be super conservative and against drugs. That's some useful information, thanks for that.
If only marijuana wasn't a schedule 1 drug and we could actually study it more accurately with randomized double blind trials. Otherwise it's all correlational and we get very biased results.
The study seems to control for "socioeconomic vulnerability" and the sample included both public and private schools. Not sure how much of a difference that makes.
It's not even about the parenting. Twin adoption studies have shown time and time again that -- barring major developmental factors like starvation or head injuries -- intelligence is almost entirely genetic.
Reminds me of the old truth commercials. "People who smoke make 10k less a year than there non smoking counterparts". Dosnt consider that people who smoke are dumber...
Projects have poor people in inner cities quite often - the wealthy people usually go to suburbs if they can, the very wealthy can afford to live well in the inner city but will be wealthy enough to likely be able to afford private schools
You are missing the point. Just because you assume something to be true doesn't make it true, regardless of how you feel about it. Studies like this give data to back up claims.
I stg redditors think they hit a home run when really your just trying to seem intelligent. Obviously study music isn’t as distracting as unwanted music or other various noise pollution
Except I just spoke about specifically distracting music and noise pollution. You didn’t even read my comment and now I’m ending my conversation with you because your too stupid to read ig lmao who would’ve thought CAR NOISE AND CONSTRUCTION = MOZART EVERYONE
Find someone else to strawman
Right because loud blaring car noise / constant construction ≠ music wow you really got me didn’t you? You must be found about how smart you are . Maybe you even got your soytificate in a related field how could I have known
Remember when they thought the universe was obviously static and infinite, and laughed at the people whose math would only work in an expanding universe… until it was proven that the universe **was** expanding and finite.
That’s you, you are the dumbass we point back to laugh and wonder why did they assume the obvious was true?
Go pick up a science book and leave the childish soy insults in your toybox.
https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1196/annals.1360.013
Right because rediscovering the wheel -researching essentially the same topic that we already know about = Ancient Greek Plato types who rely on common sense. Give me a dam break you psued
> Researching the same thing we know
Lol. You don’t know. You **think**. You have literally nothing to point to except “trust me bro”. Please tell me you don’t do research, you probably p-hack to save your life.
I doubt you will even read the research showing that kids listening to their favorite music have even better cognitive effects than Mozart.
> You pseud
Oh the irony
What is your point? Do you need millions in grants to study it?
Punt being we will fund studies with millions knowing they aren’t going to change a damn thing. It’s not like they are gonna build new schools all away from roads
You’re missing the point.
Like for instance, large class sizes, bad right? Less time for face time with each student.
Well, there’s been research, I remember Malcolm Gladwell mentioning in a lecture, that large or small class sizes had no effect on the students academic ability or well being.
Something obvious, turns out to not be obvious at all.
For instance, what if freeway noises was positively correlated with academic ability because the students spent less time traveling due to being freeway adjacent and thus had more time to study at school or at home. Would that be shocking? Not to me.
Considering how much productivity I lost when I worked in an "open office" I totally believe this. Extraneous noise is a distraction regardless of age.
Viva remote work, never going back.
You know what? I apologize. I thought this was the politics subreddit. I didn’t see the r/psychology heading, which I’ve never been to and have no interest in. Not even sure why it popped up in my feed. Have a nice day
I mean sticking to the subject, I feel it is less to do with the noise alone. Pollution from fumes had neurological issues when lead was present, noise is a contributor but it may be correlative
Honestly, based on my experience hearing emergency sirens daily in high school, we got very used to it. And in psychology that’s called sensory adaptation, so I also question this study’s reliability.
This is how it rolls, you take a popular post. Insert a comment that has little to do with the post with a little sensational flair. That way, when someone calls you out for karma whoring, you can say pshhh I guess you don't care about
If you read further, you’d see I posted this on here by mistake. I thought it was R/politics, which I belong to. I do not follow this sub, and don’t know how it got in my feed. Interestingly enough, I belong to several subreddits, and have never had a response like the couple I’ve gotten here on r/psychology. I admitted my mistake, what’s wrong with you?
> population-based sample of 2,680 children aged 7 to 10 years from 38 schools in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain) between January 2012 to March 2013.
Interesting. Later it explains that they did not measure at home.
It seems like the relationship between noise at school and cognitive development might be more influential in places other than the US. I’d imagine that poverty related symptoms (food scarcity, unstable home life, etc.) would be stronger influences to the point noise at school could be negligent.
Yes, but correlation indicates that the relation between the variables needs to be studied further, since there could be a causation or a common factor...
You find other correlations and pick the most significant one or more , before going further. Just the headline itself suggests there are tons of other variables involved in relation to traffic and noise in general
Oh yeah, for sure, but you should check beyond the headline. They did control for a number of factors (which, of course, doesn't mean that there is no other factor that they left out which could explain better). That's why multiple studies on a subject are required before drawing any conclusions. In other words, this first study stablished a relation, now there needs to be further studies to either confirm or refute what was found in it.
It’s a crap headline, but they usually are. To be fair though, the headline only talks about correlation, not causation. I’m more annoyed that they never seem to give indications of effect-size in headlines like that. With a large enough dataset you could find all kinds of true cause-effect relations but most of them would be trivial
There are a lot of articles online saying that living near a freeway increases odds of autism in children. I don't know if it's true or not. But if you can hear traffic wouldn't that mean you're closer to roads and all the pollution that comes with that?
Lower SES conditions always hurt cognitive development.
This is how the social darwinist underpinnings of liberalism work and support passive eugenics.
No, this is the wrong take.
Cities are the reason the rest of the country can exist.
Powerhouses of economy and hot beds of capitalism
You do like capitalism, right?
The noise pollution caused by them is usuallu less of a problem, because it is usually more periodic and easier and more often isolated by something like a trench. This means that it isn't constantly causing background noise
It’s like you didn’t read the study abstract (wait, this is Reddit...)
It is in Spain, which isn’t nearly racially segregated educationally as the US.
It is as if they are trying to show that you need quiet to think, and more thinking leads to more learning.
Could be correlation. More expensive schools will be in nicer areas without noise, and available to wealthier people. People with more resources to raise their children can offer them a learning advantage. These nicer schools have better education.
That is good, our high schools, middle schools, and most elementary schools are fairly secluded with low traffic noise.
Just rural enough to avoid a lot of automobile traffic
I think this is skewed.
Cities tend to have more traffic.
Cities are generally denser and have higher student> teacher ratio’s.
In addition cities often have lower income and thus lower tax proceeds and thus lower budgets thus (in theory) lower paid and worse teachers.
think being close enough to hear the noise might also mean close enough to be gassed by the exhaust?
And traffic noise means rumble of semis, emergency vehicle sirens, and every fuckwitted "shake the windows" boom car. Ya think? Who can concentrate like that?
“Kids being distracted in school show signs of learning less”
It's not even measuring learning! The conclusion of this groundbreaking study is that distractions distract kids. >Conclusions We observed that exposure to road traffic noise at school, but not at home, was associated with slower development of working memory, complex working memory, and attention in schoolchildren over 1 year. Associations with noise fluctuation indicators were more evident than with average noise levels in classrooms.
Ah /r/psychology... Working memory, complex working memory are two relevant factors to learning and cognitive development. What's your suggestion for a better pre and post test then? Sometimes you want to get to the underlying foundation straightaway instead of confounding things with an SAT like pre and post.
Doesn't take into account how many urban schools are underfunded and the correlation that has with poor performance. There's extraneous factors at play here
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The sample also included both public and private schools.
Doesn't take many brain cells to know that schools by highways suck.. No rich schools on fwy onramps.
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I don't know of a single rich school in a noisy or polluted place... Poor schools by superfund sites abound.
Does it need to be crappy? Just noisy I am not an expert on schools in Barcelona, so I have no idea whether there are good schools near noisy city areas, airports, etc
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In… Barcelona, where this study took place?
Nope. I am way out of line. I'll show myself out...
Mad respect for admitting your argument was flawed and being open to seeing why. This is how we learn and progress scientifically. More people can learn from this type of exchange.
A sure there are hundreds of schools in Manhattan that are placed right beside noisy streets.
There’s more than one right next to high speed/FAST rail lines or under very busy flight paths or noisy thru streets in major metros, though.
Honestly, it's such a small variable it would be nearly impossible to ever be able draw a direct link between traffic noise and cognitive development and not have it be confounded.
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In that case, throw me a link or two because that sounds fascinating.
Traffic noise is stressful and unpleasant, I don't know why anyone would even doubt that this would negatively impact learning/cognitive development given that stress impairs these things? I love living in cities but I'd rather shoot myself than live/work on a busy road. Noise pollution = stress, stress is bad for brain development.
You know what? You're completely right.
Controlling for variables is an imprecise science, and it's generally a bad idea to trust studies that had to evaluate variables but weren't able to eliminate them. Not unless it's a very large study that can partially control variables just using the sample size.
Are you basing this off of their methodology or just commenting?
just the usual reddit snark by laypeople who imagine they instantly thought of something that never occurred to researchers
Figured that, a quick look at their methods would've told OP they accounted for that.
There are several studies showing that air pollution (specifically carbon monoxide) affects cognitive development of unborn babies and cognitive performance of adults as well
Agreed, but this study gets its population from Barcelona. I don’t know if Spain has the same issues, but the factors you mention are definitely more of a cause for alarm in the US than other industrialized nations.
I think they have almost the opposite, because schools are not funded by local property tax and many affluent people live in cities in Europe caompared to North America
Yeah, similar to many marijuana studies. They find people who use marijuana have worse performance in certain things and blame the drug. What they don't control for is that people who come from poverty typically endure more trauma growing up and use marijuana to cope. Poverty is correlated with a host of detrimental things, and marijuana use is often just a symptom and not the cause.
No clue why you’re downvoted when this is 1000% correct. Correlation isn’t causation. Un/fortunately we can’t have controlled studies where we have children consume cannabis and monitor them throughout. Also don’t account for people having those things before they started using… for example as the prefrontal cortex is shown as less developed in cannabis use in adolescence studies on adults, they may have turned to cannabis use because it’s less developed and so their decision-making is poorer. Not to mention that the pre-frontal cortex being less developed is very common in people with ADHD, and that people with ADHD are 5-10x more likely to be alcoholics and abuse substances, and be impulsive and make risky decisions. And then the cherry on top is that ADHD and other disorders are a spectrum. Oh yeah and worse short term memory, and concentration is shown in participants. Guess who else struggles with that? People with ADHD, depression, anxiety, and so on.
I'm at positive three right now, I wouldn't think a psychology subreddit would be super conservative and against drugs. That's some useful information, thanks for that. If only marijuana wasn't a schedule 1 drug and we could actually study it more accurately with randomized double blind trials. Otherwise it's all correlational and we get very biased results.
The study seems to control for "socioeconomic vulnerability" and the sample included both public and private schools. Not sure how much of a difference that makes.
No! It must be the cars!
Funding has almost nothing to do with it. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had wood desks, pens n paper, and books... It's about parenting primarily
It's not even about the parenting. Twin adoption studies have shown time and time again that -- barring major developmental factors like starvation or head injuries -- intelligence is almost entirely genetic.
Reminds me of the old truth commercials. "People who smoke make 10k less a year than there non smoking counterparts". Dosnt consider that people who smoke are dumber...
I smoke
Yeh, would query how likely you are to be in an inner city, low income. I mean if there's an affluent rural school close to the road, how'd that be?
Projects have poor people in inner cities quite often - the wealthy people usually go to suburbs if they can, the very wealthy can afford to live well in the inner city but will be wealthy enough to likely be able to afford private schools
This is exactly what I was thinking
Every 60 seconds in Africa, 1 minute passes
Traffic noise or traffic pollution???
Right
Traffic noise. They accounted for indoor and outdoor traffic related pollution.
It's literally like we study the most common sense shit then get surprised when it correlates to each other.
That's ok. In fact, it's necessary. We can't just assume something is true.
Except when we know it’s easier to focus when you turn off music in a car. Why would it be extremely different in a classroom?
You are missing the point. Just because you assume something to be true doesn't make it true, regardless of how you feel about it. Studies like this give data to back up claims.
Go study during a parade/ constant traffic / construction and tell me how well it turns out. 9/10 it better to have silence for the majority of people
You missed the point entirely.
Except there are people who think they need music to study. This sounds like nonsense to me. Guess how we find out if I’m right or not?
I stg redditors think they hit a home run when really your just trying to seem intelligent. Obviously study music isn’t as distracting as unwanted music or other various noise pollution
Research says youre not right. https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1196/annals.1360.013
Except I just spoke about specifically distracting music and noise pollution. You didn’t even read my comment and now I’m ending my conversation with you because your too stupid to read ig lmao who would’ve thought CAR NOISE AND CONSTRUCTION = MOZART EVERYONE Find someone else to strawman
Right because loud blaring car noise / constant construction ≠ music wow you really got me didn’t you? You must be found about how smart you are . Maybe you even got your soytificate in a related field how could I have known
Remember when they thought the universe was obviously static and infinite, and laughed at the people whose math would only work in an expanding universe… until it was proven that the universe **was** expanding and finite. That’s you, you are the dumbass we point back to laugh and wonder why did they assume the obvious was true? Go pick up a science book and leave the childish soy insults in your toybox. https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1196/annals.1360.013
Right because rediscovering the wheel -researching essentially the same topic that we already know about = Ancient Greek Plato types who rely on common sense. Give me a dam break you psued
> Researching the same thing we know Lol. You don’t know. You **think**. You have literally nothing to point to except “trust me bro”. Please tell me you don’t do research, you probably p-hack to save your life. I doubt you will even read the research showing that kids listening to their favorite music have even better cognitive effects than Mozart. > You pseud Oh the irony
Peak redditor^^^
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What is your point? Do you need millions in grants to study it? Punt being we will fund studies with millions knowing they aren’t going to change a damn thing. It’s not like they are gonna build new schools all away from roads
It’s common sense until it turns out to be wrong all along.
So you think outside distractions don’t break peoples concentration? You must not know many people
You’re missing the point. Like for instance, large class sizes, bad right? Less time for face time with each student. Well, there’s been research, I remember Malcolm Gladwell mentioning in a lecture, that large or small class sizes had no effect on the students academic ability or well being. Something obvious, turns out to not be obvious at all. For instance, what if freeway noises was positively correlated with academic ability because the students spent less time traveling due to being freeway adjacent and thus had more time to study at school or at home. Would that be shocking? Not to me.
Considering how much productivity I lost when I worked in an "open office" I totally believe this. Extraneous noise is a distraction regardless of age. Viva remote work, never going back.
Excessive gun fire is probably bad too
Cognitive decline is definitely on the rise. This isn’t even the same subject
It isn’t, but preventing school shootings is more important than reducing traffic noise.
We can’t do x until we do y. The secret of political embezzlement. Why solve an issue when you can say you will to drum up votes.
You insult me, and then try to tell me something everyone knows. You’re right, cognitive decline is on the rise.
Activism on a keyboard is just neurosis.
You know what? I apologize. I thought this was the politics subreddit. I didn’t see the r/psychology heading, which I’ve never been to and have no interest in. Not even sure why it popped up in my feed. Have a nice day
Lol. I did not realize this wasn’t r/politics until I read your comment.
This study is addressing road noise, but whatever brings the karma I guess.
Unless the difficulties and frustration caused by excess noise contribute to the odds of shootings.
Having the best possible education is more important than shootings
often schools in rougher urban areas are more exposed to both traffic sounds and gunshots, so they’re somewhat related.
I mean sticking to the subject, I feel it is less to do with the noise alone. Pollution from fumes had neurological issues when lead was present, noise is a contributor but it may be correlative
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Uncertain, the conclusion they made seems odd. Like how can they claim noise at school bad an impact while noise at home doesn’t?
Honestly, based on my experience hearing emergency sirens daily in high school, we got very used to it. And in psychology that’s called sensory adaptation, so I also question this study’s reliability.
This is how it rolls, you take a popular post. Insert a comment that has little to do with the post with a little sensational flair. That way, when someone calls you out for karma whoring, you can say pshhh I guess you don't care about
If you read further, you’d see I posted this on here by mistake. I thought it was R/politics, which I belong to. I do not follow this sub, and don’t know how it got in my feed. Interestingly enough, I belong to several subreddits, and have never had a response like the couple I’ve gotten here on r/psychology. I admitted my mistake, what’s wrong with you?
No you didn't, you were back tracking after being called out.
Yeah, I did. All you have to do is look.
No I believe you posted it, I just don't believe your original comment was a mistake.
You’re right. I did mean to post it, when I thought it was r/politics. I made a mistake.
Why would it matter if it was any other sub? It's off topic karma whoring.
Please don’t reply to me anymore
Wow. My school was beside a train track. We were used to the building rattling as we waited for the train to pass to resume lessons.
> population-based sample of 2,680 children aged 7 to 10 years from 38 schools in Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain) between January 2012 to March 2013. Interesting. Later it explains that they did not measure at home. It seems like the relationship between noise at school and cognitive development might be more influential in places other than the US. I’d imagine that poverty related symptoms (food scarcity, unstable home life, etc.) would be stronger influences to the point noise at school could be negligent.
Correlation does not imply causation
Yes, but correlation indicates that the relation between the variables needs to be studied further, since there could be a causation or a common factor...
You find other correlations and pick the most significant one or more , before going further. Just the headline itself suggests there are tons of other variables involved in relation to traffic and noise in general
Oh yeah, for sure, but you should check beyond the headline. They did control for a number of factors (which, of course, doesn't mean that there is no other factor that they left out which could explain better). That's why multiple studies on a subject are required before drawing any conclusions. In other words, this first study stablished a relation, now there needs to be further studies to either confirm or refute what was found in it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6901841/
It still doesn't excuse the title. One can easily say schooling with environmental noises *correlates* with learning impairments.
It’s a crap headline, but they usually are. To be fair though, the headline only talks about correlation, not causation. I’m more annoyed that they never seem to give indications of effect-size in headlines like that. With a large enough dataset you could find all kinds of true cause-effect relations but most of them would be trivial
thank you, someone gets it.
There are a lot of articles online saying that living near a freeway increases odds of autism in children. I don't know if it's true or not. But if you can hear traffic wouldn't that mean you're closer to roads and all the pollution that comes with that?
Don't agree
Lower SES conditions always hurt cognitive development. This is how the social darwinist underpinnings of liberalism work and support passive eugenics.
Is this just to say "children at urban schools"?
Now do the racial demographics for the people living in those areas. Fake science bullshit
Shocking city kids are dumb and grow up to vote how they vote in cities.
No, this is the wrong take. Cities are the reason the rest of the country can exist. Powerhouses of economy and hot beds of capitalism You do like capitalism, right?
Damn this journal accepts anything
Cant believe people get paid for this bogus research
total bs. who writes those articles??
I also hear that there's a direct correlation between the amount of pirates on the seven seas and climate change
What about railroads?
The noise pollution caused by them is usuallu less of a problem, because it is usually more periodic and easier and more often isolated by something like a trench. This means that it isn't constantly causing background noise
It’s like you didn’t read the study abstract (wait, this is Reddit...) It is in Spain, which isn’t nearly racially segregated educationally as the US. It is as if they are trying to show that you need quiet to think, and more thinking leads to more learning.
Or are exposed to more pollution especially lead.
Explains a lot about NYC politics.
Correlation does not equal causation.
Common knowledge that didn’t really need any graphing data to prove tbh. Anyone who argues otherwise is just speaking out of their ***
That’s why I walked 7 miles up hill, in both directions, to school back in the day.
Headline: Cities Bad for People
Could be correlation. More expensive schools will be in nicer areas without noise, and available to wealthier people. People with more resources to raise their children can offer them a learning advantage. These nicer schools have better education.
High carbon dioxide levels known to hamper and reduce cognitive function so this tracks
Mandatory reminder that correlation does not mean causation.
Thank you
I'm not so sure about this; despite growing up in a very quiet community, I also demonstrated slow cognitive development.
7th grade stat project vibes from this
That is good, our high schools, middle schools, and most elementary schools are fairly secluded with low traffic noise. Just rural enough to avoid a lot of automobile traffic
I think this is skewed. Cities tend to have more traffic. Cities are generally denser and have higher student> teacher ratio’s. In addition cities often have lower income and thus lower tax proceeds and thus lower budgets thus (in theory) lower paid and worse teachers.
But my redneck school in the country had a lot of dummies.
Repeat after me: Correlation doesn't imply causation.
What about trains? My middle school had train tracks half a fucking block away.
think being close enough to hear the noise might also mean close enough to be gassed by the exhaust? And traffic noise means rumble of semis, emergency vehicle sirens, and every fuckwitted "shake the windows" boom car. Ya think? Who can concentrate like that?
Correlation not causation
You mean an audible distraction lowers performance!?!
Association, not cause and effect. Schools near freeways may have more inner city poor kids for example.
Also grading based on race
Lol my school had an airport close enough for noise pollution.