Flickering screens provide the visual white noise required to improve focus and reading skills of children with reading difficulty, says a new study. They can also help in proving other cognitive functions like memory, it says.
Titled ‘Sensory white noise improves reading skills and memory recall in children with reading disability, the study conducted by researchers from Norway and Sweden recently appeared in the journal Brain and Behaviour. It consisted of the participating children reading twelve different words in the presence of varying levels of ‘flickering screens’ or visual white noise. Those with severe reading difficulty were not only able to read more words correctly but also recall more of them when exposed to visual white noise.
“For the first time, we show that visual and auditory white noise exposure improves some reading and memory capacities ‘on the fly’ in children with reading difficulty. The white noise, also called the visual pixel noise, we exposed children to can be compared to giving spectacles to someone with myopia,” said the lead researcher Göran Söderlund from the University of Gothenburg.
He believes that this proves that very simple adjustments in the school or home environment can have profound effects on children with reading difficulty.
