The Effect of Noise and Selective Attention on Academic Performance of Secondary School Students in Jos North LGA of Plateau State

The Effect of Noise and Selective Attention on Academic Performance of Secondary School Students in Jos North LGA of Plateau State

CHAPTER ONE

Objectives of the Study

To investigate the relationship between noise distraction and selective attention on students’ academic performance. The study sought to fulfill the following objectives;

To examine the relationship between noise distraction and students’ academic
To investigate the relationship between the selective attention and student’s
To examine the relationship between school environment and student’s academic performance

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

Noise and Distraction

Noise is a prevalent feature of many locations, including the classroom, the home environment, and the workplace. When attempting to focus in those environments, sounds and noises often draw attention away from the task at hand, resulting in a decrement in performance (Banbury et al., 2001). Biologically and evolutionarily speaking, the ability to attend to sounds unrelated to current responsibilities is helpful for detecting immediate danger in the environment and responding accordingly, or in more recent times, responding to significant sounds such as alarms; however, as stated by Banbury et al. (2001), our ability to attend to background noise also has “the disadvantage that our attention will be captured by sounds with no relevance or significance, even when we are intent on concentrating on something else” (p. 13). Thus, while some noise is important and helpful to attend to, other noise is just plain distracting.

The distracting impact of noise in general has been studied extensively in research on adults (for an overview see Banbury et al., 2001, and Szalma & Hancock, 2011), though less so on children, and especially, adolescents (for an overview see Clark & Sörqvist, 2012, and Klatte, Berström, & Lachmann, 2013). As Klatte et al. (2013) suggest, children may be more vulnerable to the disruption to their cognitive functioning caused by noise because their cognitive abilities, including attentional control, are less well developed than that of adults. Due to a lack of research with adolescent participants, it is unclear if the noise effect with youth would be similar to that seen in children (because of underdeveloped cognitive control) or more comparable to that seen in adults. For example, children’s performance on speech perception tasks is often more impaired than adults’ in noisy environments, though improvements lead to adult-like performance by early adolescence; however, even with improvements, older children with attention disorders still show more impairment from background noise on speech perception tasks than their normally-developing peers (Klatte et al., 2013). Thus, as adolescents with ADHD exhibit more poorly developed attentional control than their peers, they may show more difficulty on tasks in the presence of noise than youth without ADHD.

Results of studies conducted with adults and children indicate that both characteristics of the task and characteristics of the noise can influence the amount of disruption on task performance. Related to the characteristics of the task, seriation tasks, or those that require that items be remembered in order (e.g., mental arithmetic, serial recall), are more disrupted by noise than tasks that do not require seriation (e.g., Perham & Vizard, 2001). The timing of the noise presentation during a task does not seem to influence the magnitude of the noise effect as sounds can be detrimental for performance whether they are presented during learning trials and/or during recall (Banbury et al., 2001). Tasks that are related to semantic understanding, such as reading comprehension, story writing, and proofreading tasks, appear to have a greater amount of distraction from certain types of noises that have more apparent meaning (e.g., recognizable speech, lyrical music; Banbury et al., 2001; Klatte et al., 2013). Additionally, more cognitively demanding tasks and tasks that measure accuracy (as opposed to speed) have been shown to have larger adverse noise effects (Szalma & Hancock, 2011), at least with adults.

Studies of noise effects also suggest that characteristics of the noise, in addition to characteristics of the required task, contribute to the effect of noise on performance for children, youth, and adults. Noise intensity is not of primary importance for the magnitude of the noise effect. For example, Banbury et al. (2001) found that negative effects of noise on performance occur regardless of the sound pressure level of the noise (measured in decibels), even for noises that are presented at very low levels. The most disruptive type of noise appears to be speech and other linguistic noises for all age groups, including children, adolescents, and adults (Klatte et al., 2013; Szalma & Hancock, 2011).

CHAPTER THREE

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Research Design

Descriptive survey design was used in this research because of its descriptive nature that aids in learning people’s perception, attitude beliefs, values, behaviors’, opinions, likes and dislikes, habits, and desires. As regards Orodho and Kombo (2002), this design can be used when collecting information about people’s attitudes, opinions, habits or any of the variety of education and social issues. In this case this design helped the researcher in collecting information regarding the student’s attitude towards learning in the given environment and how the noise distraction can affect student’s performance in Jos North LGA of Plateau State.

Target Population

Target population refers to all the members of a real or hypothetical set of people, objects by observing some of them and extending them to the entire population or set of events (Orodho 2009).

According to Orodho and Kombo (2003) target population is a group of individuals, objects or items from which samples are taken for measurements, it refers to the larger group from which the sample is taken. Population is a group of interest to the researcher, the group to whom the researcher would like to generalize the result of the study (Best and Khan 1996). According to Mugenda and Mugenda (1999) a target population is the population to which the researcher would like to generate his/her results. In conducting a research study, the researcher would ideally investigate all the individuals to whom they wish to generalize their findings. In this study, the target population is 359 teachers, 11, 236 students from 39 public secondary schools in Jos North LGA, Plateau State.

CHAPTER FOUR

DATA ANALYSIS, PRESENATION AND INTERPRETATION

General Information

Gender distribution for Teachers and students

The study sought to establish the respondent’s gender distribution. The findings are as stipulated in table 4Table 4.4 Gender distribution for Teachers and students

From the findings 61.3% of the teachers were male while 28.7% were female. On the other hand, 60% of the students were male while 40% were female. This means that the noise distraction affected students’ academic performance for both genders as the study had both male and female students as the respondents.

CHAPTER FIVE

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendations

Finally, 4 recommendations were provided as follows:

Due to relationship between components of noise of educational spaces and increased behavioral disorder among students, it is recommended that educational managers of country pay attention to psychological advices on colors and sounds.
It is recommended that particular attention should be paid to educational space of schools in terms of designing and building. The physical environment spaces should be designed and built so that they can be compatible with inherent tendency and nature of students. In addition, solutions should be found for educational spaces requiring major repairs.
As standards and criteria determine the desired level, and since the desired level of one region might be different from other region, it is recommended that a committee to be established to assess the internal situation of schools in Ahvaz so that it can determine the desired standards and criteria and schools to assessed accordingly.
It is required that higher attention to be paid on ergonomic relationship with behavioral disorders in students since the beginning of pre-school education and conduct the assessment plan to detect children who have particular needs and attempt to organize children with behavioral disorder (27).

CONCLUSION

Professional promotion of teachers and students is one of the most important factors examined in evaluating specific characteristics of the performance of any educational institution and its realization creates better results in outcomes of the system (28). In recent years, curricula and textbooks have been thoroughly considered, but this principle, the physical characteristics of educational environment and its impact on students’ performance and mood have not been investigated significantly. Theoretically, paying attention to environmental factors of the educational environments and foresight on supplying facilities and needs of educational spaces not only help managers and planners in adopting right and realistic decisions, but also are a necessity of any kind of educational planning. Studies have shown that noise pollution is the main cause of discomfort among teachers and students which appears in the form of discomfort, irritability, lack of concentration, drowsiness, fatigue, depression and headache. In addition, in the long term it can cause cardiovascular, respiratory and gastrointestinal problems. Other studies have shown that noise pollution can cause poor concentration in school, interfering with the conversation, drop off students in the courses and even reducing their grades, especially in math. Some studies have focused on hearing loss and mental disorders among students in relation to noise pollution. Previous studies indicate that more than 60% of acoustic conditions in schools are inappropriate and students are exposed to noises that are greater than the recommended levels, which is caused by the low-quality of the new building materials used in structures having poor insulation, especially those used in class doors and windows, foreign sources of noise and inappropriate material of interior surfaces with regard to the acoustic resonance and its reflection. Because controlling the aggravating factors affecting noise pollution in schools has multiple solutions including an acoustic modification of the internal surfaces of structures, proper insulation, controlling sounds from mechanical sources and somatic noise sources, identifying and implementing solutions should be in a way not interfering with normal activity and the comfort people requires detailed and purposeful studies. Analyses and Effects of Noise on Learning calculations have shown that the best way to control noise is based on the modified acoustic structures for schools. Studies have shown that most educational spaces in our new schools, especially in remote and disadvantaged areas are not compatible with psychotic features of children and adolescents. Therefore, it is necessary to exert modifications in this regard. Physical variables, even if they have no impact on students’ academic achievement, should be taken into consideration for maintaining health care and mental health and safety.

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