Child-appropriate experiment on auditory selective attention in a virtual acoustic environment

Abstract

Assessing noise effects in children`s development has gained more and more importance in the last years. Noise not only affects cognitive processes of children, e.g. attention control [3], but can also lead to stress-related bodily reactions, such as increased heart rate [5]. Recent research has therefore brought correlating factors between physiological and psychological effects into focus. This leads to the integration of combined assessment of cognitive parameters and vital parameters in listening experiments with noisy conditions. To meet higher ecological validity in these experiments, influences caused by the experimental setup should be minimized. It is therefore important to consider unobstrusive measurement methods which do not constrain participant movement during the experiment. A method to assess vital parameters using an unobtrusive measurement method is proposed in combination with a child-appropriate experiment on auditory selective attention in virtual acoustic environments.