# The Influence of Noise Perception and Parent-Rated Developmental Characteristics on White Noise Benefits in Children

## TL;DR

The study explores how children's developmental traits and perception of noise affect the benefits of white noise on their performance in specific tasks.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel approach linking subjective noise perception and developmental characteristics to task-specific white noise benefits in children.

## Key findings

- In the Prolonged Fixation task, children with high perceptual difficulties and noise discomfort showed improved performance with noise.
- In the Memory-Guided Saccades task, motor skills predicted noise benefit, while noise discomfort reduced it.
- White noise effects were small and task-dependent, suggesting individualized approaches are needed.

## Abstract

White noise has been proposed to enhance cognitive performance in children with ADHD, but findings are inconsistent, and benefits vary across tasks and individuals. Such variability suggests that diagnostic comparisons may overlook meaningful developmental differences. This exploratory study examined whether developmental characteristics and subjective evaluations of auditory and visual white noise predicted performance changes in two eye-movement tasks: Prolonged Fixation (PF) and Memory-Guided Saccades (MGS). Children with varying degrees of ADHD symptoms completed both tasks under noise and no-noise conditions, and noise benefit scores were calculated as the performance difference between conditions. Overall, white-noise effects were small and dependent on noise modality and task. In the PF task, large parent-rated perceptual difficulties and high visual noise discomfort were associated with improved performance under noise. In the MGS task, poor motor skills predicted visual noise benefit, whereas large visual noise discomfort predicted reduced noise benefit. These findings suggest that beneficial effects of white noise are influenced by developmental characteristics and subjective perception in task-dependent ways. The results highlight the need for individualized, transdiagnostic approaches in future noise research and challenge the notion of white noise as categorically beneficial for ADHD.