28th International Congress of Psychology August 8 ... - U-netSURF

2022.2 Speech understanding in noise: Effects of cognitive skill and hearing loss, B. Lyxell 1 , E.
Borg 2 , B. Larsby 1 , M. Hällgren 1 , 1 Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden; 2 Örebro University,
Sweden
Results from a series of studies where the purpose was examine the relationship between cognitive
skills, hearing loss and auditory and audio-visual speech understanding in noise will be reviewed
and discussed. The general trend in the results demonstrate a significant relationship between
cognitive skill and type of noise and type of listening situation such that cognitive skills is related
to level of speech understanding in listening situations that requires an active listening (i.e.,
answering of questions) and that background noise constituted by human voices proved to be more
tied to cognitive skills than other types of background noises (e.g., white noise).
2022.3 Reverberation time, cognitive load and fatigue, A. Kjellberg, University of Gävle,
Gävle, Sweden
Speech communication under unfavourable acoustic conditions means that a larger part of the
limited working memory resources must be allocated to the phonological coding of the speech.
Less resources therefore remain for the further processing of speech: integration of current
information with previously presented parts of the speech and with permanently stored
information and the more permanent storing of new information. Effects of reverberation time on
the listener’s cognitive load and learning are discussed from this perspective. Studies are needed
of reverberation effects in realistic long-lasting speech communication situations to better
understand the effect of RT on speech communication.
2022.4 Implications of the RANCH study for cognitive mechanisms of noise, C. Clark, S.A.
Stansfeld, M. Matheson, University of London, London, UK
The RANCH project has examined the effects of road traffic and aircraft noise exposure on
children’s cognitive performance across three European countries. Effects were found for aircraft
noise on reading comprehension, working memory, and episodic memory but not for sustained
attention or prospective memory. Road traffic noise was not associated with effects for any of the
cognitive outcome measures. An effect was found for exposure to both aircraft noise and road
traffic noise for reading comprehension. The implications of these results for current models of the
mechanisms underlying noise effects will be explored.
2022.5 Structural equation modeling of memory systems in relation to noise exposure, age and
gender, S. Hygge, I. Enmarker, E. Boman, University of Gävle, Gävle, Sweden
Three recent noise experiments have employed the same design, procedure noise sources and
memory tests. Participants were children aged 13-14 years, young adults aged 18-20 years, and
teachers aged 35-45 and 55-65 years. Noise sources were meaningful irrelevant speech and road
traffic noise, which were compared to a silent control condition. For memory tasks with a time
differentiation between encoding and retrieval, retrieval was performed in silence. Structural
equation modeling of the memory sub-systems showed attention, episodic, and semantic memory
to be roughly invariant across age, noise exposure and gender. Thus, noise effects on memory
operate on the efficiency of the processes, but not on its structure.
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