Development and application of a new test procedure for the investigation of effects of noise on reading in school children

摘要

In many studies investigating noise effects in children, effects on reading performance are tested. For these measurements often a respective national standardized test is used. But even standardized test procedures differ a lot concerning many aspects, e.g. the task itself, duration, or response format. An additional problem - mainly when investigating acute noise effects - is that standard diagnostic tests do not take into consideration that noise can affect reading in a very specific way. Therefore, a carefully designed reading task in German language was developed for a large study on effects of acute road traffic sounds in school children. The main assignment in this test is to search mistakes in written sentences by silent reading. The aim was to construct a procedure which is especially sensitive to adverse noise effects. The new test was constructed in two parallel versions. Each version includes 36 items with a semantic or grammatical mistake and 12 items with no mistake. An evaluation study showed a high test-retest reliability for both test versions. In experimental "noise studies" 174 children from third grade worked on the reading task in different road traffic sound conditions. Because of the moderate presentation level, the overall effects of the road traffic sounds were small. However, detailed analyses regarding special aspects like working accuracy, kind of mistake or item complexity, revealed some interesting and novel results. These findings confirm that it is an important approach to consider specific construction principles in order to develop a noise sensitive reading task.