Primary school children’s verbal working memory performances in classrooms with different acoustic conditions

Verbal working memory plays a crucial role in supporting the learning process over the school years. In this study, we investigated the role of the acoustic conditions of school classrooms, specifically reverberation time and babble noise, on second-graders’ verbal working memory. A sample of twenty-five second-graders was administered a validated verbal working memory task in two different acoustic conditions, with a time frame of 1 month: Poor acoustic quality (long reverberation time Long RT and babble) versus Adequate acoustic quality (short reverberation time Short RT and babble). Results showed that the same children were able to remember fewer words and less accurately on the task in a classroom with longer reverberation time and babble compared to one with shorter reverberation time and babble. Moreover, children omitted more words in the recall task in the Poor acoustic quality condition than in the Adequate acoustic quality condition. The results suggested that primary school children’s verbal working memory processing is sensitive to variations in the classroom acoustic conditions. These findings offer a research contribution about the importance of adopting a contextual view on cognitive development and insights for the implementation of school interventions in terms of metacognitive work on learning to listen and classroom design.