科研之友
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摘要
Objectives: Noise often has detrimental effects on performance. However, because of the phenomenon of stochastic resonance (SR), auditory white noise (WN) can alter the %26quot;signal to noise%26apos;%26apos; ratio and improve performance. The Moderate Brain Arousal (MBA) model postulates different levels of internal %26quot;neural noise%26apos;%26apos; in individuals with different attentional capacities. This in turn determines the particular WN level most beneficial in each individual case-with one level of WN facilitating poor attenders but hindering super-attentive children. The objective of the present study is to find out if added WN affects cognitive performance differently in children that differ in attention ability. %26lt;br%26gt;Methods: Participants were teacher-rated super-(N = 25); normal-(N = 29) and sub-attentive (N = 36) children (aged 8 to 10 years). Two non-executive EF) tasks (a verbal episodic recall task and a delayed verbal recognition task) and two EF tasks (a visuo-spatial working memory test and a Go-NoGo task) were performed under three WN levels. The non-WN condition was only used to control for potential differences in background noise in the group testing situations. %26lt;br%26gt;Results: There were different effects of WN on performance in the three groups-adding moderate WN worsened the performance of super-attentive children for both task types and improved EF performance in sub-attentive children. The normal-attentive children%26apos;s performance was unaffected by WN exposure. The shift from moderate to high levels of WN had little further effect on performance in any group. %26lt;br%26gt;Significance: The predicted differential effect of WN on performance was confirmed. However, the failure to find evidence for an inverted U function challenges current theories. Alternative explanations are discussed. We propose that WN therapy should be further investigated as a possible non-pharmacological treatment for inattention.
- 出版日期2014-11-13
