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Reduced Neural Tracking of Speech in Noisy Classroom Environments

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 7, 3:00 – 5:00 pm, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Julie Schneider^1,2 (julieschneider@g.ucla.edu), Jacob Momsen³, Shreya Kannan^1,2, Jennie Grammer^1,2; ¹UCLA, ²UC|CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity and Learning, ³Yale University

The ability to comprehend speech in everyday acoustic environments is essential for classroom learning. Although background noise is known to disrupt speech perception (Bradley & Sato, 2008), how realistic classroom acoustics influence the neural encoding of continuous speech remains unclear. In this study, 25 school-aged children (7–12 years) will listen to short excerpts from The Story of Doctor Dolittle while their EEG is recorded. Stories are presented in two counterbalanced conditions: quiet and noisy, with the latter containing background noise recorded from real classrooms (dB = 55 dB, Reverberation Time = 0.9 sec). Following each story, children answer comprehension questions to assess understanding. We apply a backward (decoder) model using the multivariate temporal response function (mTRF) framework to reconstruct the acoustic speech envelope from neural activity. The model’s reconstruction accuracy serves as an index of how strongly the brain tracks the speech signal over time. Preliminary analyses (N = 9) revealed greater neural tracking in the quiet compared to noisy condition (b = 1.48, SE = 6.20, p = .02). Although not statistically significant, comprehension performance showed a similar trend, with higher accuracy in quiet (M = 100%) than in noise (M = 92%; t(9) = –1.31, p = .22). These findings suggest that realistic classroom noise diminishes the fidelity of neural entrainment to speech and may contribute to subtle decrements in language comprehension, highlighting the need to consider acoustic environments in both educational practice and cognitive models of speech perception.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Development & aging