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In order to effectively communicate, listeners must identify a speaker’s message quickly and accurately. A speaker’s message can easily be lost in the presence of ambient noise, especially for children, who spend a great deal of time in noisy environments. Children aged 6-12 spend approximately 80% of their day in noisy environments such as classrooms, playgrounds and school cafeterias (Crunkley, Scollie & Parsa, 2011). With increasing classroom sizes and a trend toward open concept classrooms, learning spaces are noisier than ever, especially for young children (Shields & Dockerell, 2008).

While adult has experienced the difficulties to focus and to be effective in a noisy environment, these effects are only increased when faced by children. Children who exhibit difficulty identifying speech in noise thus perform poorly academically (de Carvalho, Novelli & Colella-Santos, 2017) and deficits in perception of speech in noise can negatively impact language, psychosocial development, literacy, and academic progress – disproportionately so for children already at risk because of a developmental disability (Dockrell & Shield, 2004). Because the ability to perceive speech does not fully develop until around age 11, individuals with sensory and cognitive deficits will exhibit greater challenges in noisy environments. While interventions for speech and language exist, to our knowledge, none explicitly screen for perception of speech in the presence of noise. Critically, the contribution of noisy environments to problems in performance is not easily observable by professionals and, thus, it is not being taken into account in educational and therapeutic settings.