Effects Of Environmental Stimulation On Lecture Retention For Students High In ADHD-Related Traits

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with a profound impact on functioning that is linked with academic underperformance. Despite this, many studies on academic learning in ADHD are limited to lab settings and fewer have tested learning strategies in applied learning environments like a university lecture. Presentation speed and white noise are two manipulations that have been studied in lab contexts. Research indicates that increasing presentation speed and adding white noise both improve prolonged attention. There is some limited evidence that both manipulations improve certain aspects of learning, such as memory, and that white noise improves executive functioning and speech perception.

Our aim was to test whether white noise and increased presentation speed improved information retention in an online university lecture-context. Undergraduate participants watched a 20-minute lecture with no manipulation, and one with increased speed (Experiment 1) or white noise (Experiment 2). Participants completed short quizzes after each lecture as well as the self-report WURS-25 ADHD metric. We expected, firstly, a negative correlation between ADHD-related traits and accuracy in the control condition, and secondly, a positive correlation between ADHD-related traits and improvements in recall from the control to the white noise and increased speed conditions.

We found no significant relationship between ADHD-scores and either performance in the control conditions, the effect of white noise or the effect of lecture speed. Neither white noise nor speed had a significant effect on overall scores. Providing context for these primary results, scores on the WURS-25 metric were unexpectedly high overall. We also excluded an unexpectedly high proportion of students in experiment 2 because they did not complete the tasks as instructed; excluded participants had significantly higher scores on the WURS-25.

One possible implication of our results is the WURS-25 is not a valid assessment of ADHD in our online context, meaning we cannot draw firm conclusions about the links between ADHD, white noise, presentation speed and recall. We also discuss the possibility that white noise and increased lecture speed are not useful strategies to support students with ADHD to learn from lectures.