Listening through the lens of culture: How acoustic environments shape language development

Listening through the lens of culture: How acoustic environments shape language development

By Emily Leclerc | Waisman Science Writer

The influence of culture on an individual’s everyday life, behavior, and values is as ubiquitous as the air we breathe. It seeps into everything. Understanding cultural influences imparts important knowledge about an individual, their families, communities, and even larger populations. And yet, scientific research is often conducted in a way that is isolated from the impact of culture as a way to control for variables. New research from Waisman Center investigator Carlos Benítez-Barrera, PhD, assistant professor of communication sciences and disorders, emphasizes the importance of understanding cultural influences and values when studying the impact of acoustic environments on language development.

Carlos Benítez-Barrera, PhD
Carlos Benítez-Barrera, PhD

Benítez-Barrera’s overall research interests lie in deciphering how acoustic environments – the collection of noises and noise levels that an individual experiences throughout their day – impacts language development in children, particularly children with hearing loss. But in order to better ask that question, he first needs to understand factors that contribute to different acoustic environments and what influences create louder, busier, or quieter ones. In previous research, Benítez-Barrera has shown that acoustic environments do differ based on culture but the underlying why still remains clouded. This new paper is a continuation of previous work that he is building on at Waisman.

“I am from Spain and we are way louder than Americans,” Benítez-Barrera says. “An American will come to Spain and say this is super noisy. The culture you experience can shape your preferences for different auditory environments.”

This new study, Effects of Cultural Dynamics on Everyday Acoustic Environments which was published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, investigates the impact of different cultural values on an individual’s social behavior and how that influences their acoustic environment. The study followed 74 total students from the University of Connecticut. 31 of the students were of Latino heritage and 43 were of European heritage. Each student wore a digital recorder that documented the noise and noise levels that the students experienced as they went about their daily lives. Benítez-Barrera and his collaborators consistently found that the Latino students experienced more noise throughout their days. The noise levels in both groups were below potentially damaging levels.

“Many Latino cultures have what we call collectivistic tendencies that makes them seek more social interactions in different places,” Benítez-Barrera says. “That raises the levels of noise that they experience.” A collectivistic culture typically means that value is placed more at the group level rather than the individual. These types of cultures tend to place great importance in kinship, family, and community. European cultures tend more toward individualistic values. This cultural trend toward collectivism is likely an important influence on why this study found that the students of Latino heritage were experiencing noisier environments overall.

With language development, the act of hearing more language as a child grows is associated with stronger language skills later in life. If a child is consistently exposed to noisy environments then that has the possibility to impact language learning. In children who have hearing loss, the impact could be compounded. “Even if you have parents that talk and engage a lot with a child with hearing loss or a cochlear implant, they might not be able to access much of that language because it is being clouded by noise,” Benítez-Barrera says.

 

Nairán Ramírez-Esparza
Nairán Ramírez-Esparza, PhD

This work underscores the importance of adapting research questions and the potential development of treatments and therapies for cultural appropriateness. Culture is a significant influence and often very important to individuals and families. Benítez-Barrera brought in a cultural expert to help bring the data into context. “Researchers often associate noise and noisy environments with something bad or potentially damaging,” Nairán Ramírez-Esparza, PhD, first author of the study and associate professor of psychological sciences at the University of Connecticut, says. “But if you start to look at things from a cultural perspective you start to understand that it is not necessarily bad. It can be associated with cultural values and preferences and be good for someone’s health because it makes you feel connected to others. It’s a way to help see the world in grays rather than black and white.”

When thinking about children with hearing loss, this work can have important consequences. If the results of studies and the therapies developed later on are not responsive to how an individual functions in the real world and how the world influences them, then they may fail when implemented outside of a laboratory space. For children of Latino heritage, this may mean more investments in improving cochlear implants or developing interventions that can help improve language skills inside of noisier environments.

Even clinical recommendations can be heavily impacted by an individual’s culture. Currently Hispanic individuals have lower rates of adherence to wearing hearing aids than others. Hearing aids tend not to function as well in noisy environments and current recommendations are to then avoid these types of environments. For someone who’s cultural values encourage and value spending time with family, friends, and in more social situations, that advice would not be feasible. Adjusting clinical recommendations to better fit the patient and the world they live in is important and cultural information should be a part of those adjustments.

“Most research, including audiology, has focused on ‘WEIRD’ societies. Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. So, the treatments that have been developed have been built in that very specific culture and that type of culture is least representative of the entire world,” Benítez-Barrera says. “We need to start taking into account how culture affects everything, all aspects of life. In this case, we need to understand how cultures affect the acoustic environment that kids experience so that we can start to adapt treatments to those cultures specifically rather than just assuming that it is going to work for everybody.”

This research was supported by the Research Excellence Program from the University of Connecticut, Storrs.

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