Observational analysis shows hospital noise diminishes speech intelligibility and impairs comprehension in participants, suggesting a need for focused interventions.
Hospital noise levels often exceed World Health Organization recommendations, raising concerns about their impact on spoken communication. Bent et al. (2022) examined this issue by presenting medical sentences to participants in quiet, speech-shaped, and hospital noise conditions. Their findings demonstrated that both types of noise reduced speech intelligibility, underscoring the challenges noise presents to effective communication in clinical settings. While this research highlights noise’s detrimental effect on intelligibility, additional studies suggest that noise can also increase cognitive load potentially impairing comprehension and subsequent memory. It is essential to explore how noise influences cognitive processes to better understand its effects on healthcare outcomes. Our study extends this research by investigating the impact of hospital noise on comprehension and memory. Participants assume the role of a patient and complete four virtual medical scenarios; two in quiet and two in hospital noise. After each scenario, participants complete questions designed to assess their ability to recall, integrate, and extend information from a given scenario. In addition to scenario-based tasks, participants undergo assessments of hearing, memory, and auditory comprehension. These include pure-tone audiometry, the Wechsler Memory Test, and the NIH Toolbox Picture Vocabulary Test. Data collection is ongoing at the University of Chicago and Indiana University Bloomington, involving young (18+) and older adults (65+).
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White et al. (2025) studied this question.