Effects of classroom acoustics on potential struggling first-grade readers

Every time pupils learn, they try to understand and decode a voice message from the teacher. Thus, to maximise speech intelligibility they try to tune into speech and to tune out competing sounds. Such process can be compromised under adverse classroom acoustic conditions, as the speech signal can be degraded when excessive reflections are present in the learning environment. When considering the literacy development of children, the cognitive effort demanded under noisy conditions is proved to be very high. Also, according to the recently formalized “rise-time theory”, impairments in the phonological processing, which may turn into the appearance of potential reading disorders, can be related to difficulties recognizing the speech sound structure, particularly its amplitude modulation. The role of optimal acoustics in terms of noise and reverberation control in the learning environments is therefore crucial, as it contributes to prevent the amplitude modulation of the speech signal produced by a teacher that is then received by a pupil. This work deals with the effects of classroom acoustics on the reading scores of about 200 first-graders who belonged to 12 classes from 7 primary schools located in Torino (Italy). In-field one-to-one measurements on the reading abilities of pupils (e.g. words and text reading speed) were done by trained experimenters in the last two months of the school year. Acoustic measurements were performed in all the classrooms, and data were correlated to the individual reading scores. Preliminary results from a pilot study on second-graders revealed that classroom acoustics had a stronger effect on the reading abilities of those children that perform below the 30th-percentile of the entire classroom (i.e. the so called “potential struggling readers”). The 30th-percentile thresholds were therefore investigated in this study as well, and reading results are now under analysis to support the previously found relations with classroom acoustics.