NOISE and the LEARNING BRAIN

Julie Schneider, Project Scientists from SEIS is conducting a research study to explore how children’s learning depends on their ability to focus, remember, and process information—yet many classrooms expose them to noise levels that undermine these skills. While research has shown that acoustic noise can interfere with cognitive processing by diverting the brain’s attention away from important tasks most studies have been conducted with adults or have focused on external noise sources like traffic. Critically, we still know little about how internal classroom noise affects children’s real-time brain activity during learning.  This project will investigate a) noise levels in classroom and how they relate to academic achievement and b) how different levels of classroom noise influence children’s neural and behavioral performance on key cognitive tasks. Using EEG, we will measure brain activity in children (ages 8–12) as they complete language learning, story comprehension, and attention tasks under three listening conditions: quiet, moderate noise (with mitigation techniques), and typical classroom noise. Each child will also complete assessments of cognitive and language skills.  To address this gap in our understanding, the current project seeks to measure the acoustic environment of empty classrooms after school hours and relate them to anonymized, group-level achievement scores. We will also investigate the neural mechanisms by which classroom noise affects learning, attention, and working memory in a subset of children

This project was featured in the 2025-26 UCLA Lab School Research Forum.