The main goal of the present research is to gain a better understanding of the consequences of background noise on learning, with a specific focus on how noise may impair maths achievement. A mental calculation task was administered in the classroom to 162 middle-school students (11–13 years old). The listening conditions were manipulated, choosing three different conditions - quiet, traffic and classroom noise - to reflect realistic noise exposure experienced in urban classrooms. A differential negative effect of listening condition on maths performance emerged in relation to task difficulty and children's age. The youngest children performed better in the quiet and traffic noise conditions than in the classroom noise condition, while in the older children these differences gradually disappeared. The detrimental effect of classroom noise was most evident when the maths task was moderately difficult. With increasing task complexity, the difference between listening conditions faded.

These data support the idea that younger children are more susceptible to the detrimental effects of noise in school classrooms than older children, and that their academic attainments are affected. Our findings have implications for classroom learning because different types of environmental noise affected children's performance differently, depending on the complexity of the task in hand.

本研究的主要目的是更好地理解背景噪音对学习的影响，并特别关注噪音如何影响数学成绩。在教室中对162名中学生（11-13岁）进行了一项心理计算任务。调节了聆听条件，选择了三种不同的条件-安静，交通和教室噪音-以反映城市教室中现实的噪声暴露。与任务难度和孩子的年龄有关，听力条件对数学成绩产生了不同的负面影响。年龄最小的孩子在安静和交通噪音条件下的表现要好于教室的声音条件，而年龄较大的孩子这些差异逐渐消失。当数学任务中等困难时，教室噪音的有害影响最为明显。随着任务复杂性的提高，聆听条件之间的差异逐渐消失。

这些数据支持这样的想法，即年幼的孩子比年长的孩子更容易受到学校教室里噪音的有害影响，并且他们的学业受到影响。我们的发现对课堂学习具有影响，因为根据手头任务的复杂性，不同类型的环境噪声对孩子的表现有不同的影响。