"We wish to highlight the serious nature of early childhood centre noise and encourage everyone to think seriously about how we can improve the learning environment for these children," says Stuart McLaren, Senior Lecturer in Health Science at the Wellington campus.

A wide range of groups of children with special education needs were considered in the study, along with young children in general. These include children with autism, Asperger syndrome, Down syndrome, ADHD, global developmental delay and the hearing impaired. While all these children are seriously affected by noise, the effects on autistic children in general are far more severe.

Mr McLaren says the wide range of noises affecting children include general classroom noise, school bells, machine noise from fans, vacuum cleaners and lawn mowing, and unexpected noises such as dogs barking and road works.

"While their hearing may be normal, autistic children process auditory information differently. What others perceive as normal and tolerable can be extremely intense and painful to them. Noise can have two serious effects on these children. First, it causes them pain, distress and confusion, and second, it erodes their ability to communicate and learn," says Mr McLaren.

"We intend to investigate a wide range of strategies to help these children. We have already seen some excellent individual strategies, which could be developed further. These include providing quiet spaces, and using a ‘traffic light’ system.

"Much of the present work is focused on these children being integrated into regular early childhood eduction environments. However we must look more closely at the learning environment too," he says.

"Why it is acceptable to expect autistic children to negotiate their way around any such environment when we never expect children with physical disabilities to negotiate their way up a flight of steps?"

Source: http://masseynews.massey.ac.nz/2005/Press_Releases/11-01-05.html