@article{ref1,
title="Different effects of adding white noise on cognitive performance of sub-, normal and super-attentive school children",
journal="PLoS one",
year="2014",
author="Helps, Suzannah K. and Bamford, Susan and Sonuga-Barke, Edmund J. S. and Söderlund, Göran B. W.",
volume="9",
number="11",
pages="e112768-e112768",
abstract="OBJECTIVES: Noise often has detrimental effects on performance. However, because of the phenomenon of stochastic resonance (SR), auditory white noise (WN) can alter the &quot;signal to noise&quot; ratio and improve performance. The Moderate Brain Arousal (MBA) model postulates different levels of internal &quot;neural noise&quot; in individuals with different attentional capacities. This in turn determines the particular WN level most beneficial in each individual case-with one level of WN facilitating poor attenders but hindering super-attentive children. The objective of the present study is to find out if added WN affects cognitive performance differently in children that differ in attention ability. <br><br>METHODS: Participants were teacher-rated super- (N = 25); normal- (N = 29) and sub-attentive (N = 36) children (aged 8 to 10 years). Two non-executive function (EF) tasks (a verbal episodic recall task and a delayed verbal recognition task) and two EF tasks (a visuo-spatial working memory test and a Go-NoGo task) were performed under three WN levels. The non-WN condition was only used to control for potential differences in background noise in the group testing situations. <br><br>RESULTS: There were different effects of WN on performance in the three groups-adding moderate WN worsened the performance of super-attentive children for both task types and improved EF performance in sub-attentive children. The normal-attentive children's performance was unaffected by WN exposure. The shift from moderate to high levels of WN had little further effect on performance in any group. SIGNIFICANCE: The predicted differential effect of WN on performance was confirmed. However, the failure to find evidence for an inverted U function challenges current theories. Alternative explanations are discussed. We propose that WN therapy should be further investigated as a possible non-pharmacological treatment for inattention.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1932-6203",
doi="10.1371/journal.pone.0112768",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0112768"
}