鉄軌道騒音慢性暴露が児童の思考活動に及ぼす影響について

抄録

Although the harmful effects of noise may be reduced by a person's becoming accustomed to it the authors have analyzed the relation between the thinking process and chronic exposure to noise. The experimental results show that school children who are used to noise are more affected by the noise on their thinking process than the other children.
Eleven year old children were given thinking problems in which a female feacher read 3 digit numbers at a constant level, after which the subjects had to write down each number in reverse order. Some of the problems were given with a background of railway noise at various levels and the results obtained were analyzed to determine the effects of the presence of noise, noise levels and of chronic exposure to noise.
Based on the results, it is suggested that some habituation to suppress studying activities such as “suspention of thinking” or “abandoning work” are formad on the children who always do their thinking in a noisy environment.