Performing mental arithmetic tasks in real classrooms: Does performance depend on the type of background noise and task difficulty?

Reverberation and background noise are known to impact on student’s speech reception and in turn on their academic attainments. In this study, performance in a mental calculation task was explored. Children with normal hearing were presented with mental calculations with two levels of difficulty, in three listening conditions (quiet, traffic noise, classroom noise). A differential negative effect of listening condition on maths performance emerged in relation to task difficulty and children’s age. The detrimental effect of classroom noise was most evident for the youngest children, and when the task was moderately difficult.