Part Seven - Ambient Audio Stimuli

Part Seven - Equations for the Joyous Mind

E –Emotional Quotient (Stimuli) as it affect by Ambient Audio Stimuli

(Click on image to enlarge and focus.)

In order for the human mind to function normally (a difficult state to define, indeed), nature has evolved for the human mind a special capacity.  This is often called filtering.  At first, as infants in the first few years of life, our brains filter very little.  All loud noises, super-bright lights, bad smells, ugly or jangly (unnatural) color combinations, jagged textured surfaces – any number of sensory stimuli are interpreted as threatening when they exceed certain thresholds.  As we learn and adapt to our environments, our brains move the threshold needle to higher and higher levels; as we also develop physical skills (coordination) and reasonable abilities to evaluate danger(s).

However, the whole world we later call the ambient sensory stimulus still exists.  It is still present and parts of the brain are still affected.  Eventually the noise of the traffic, ever present sounds of machinery, shoe heels clicking and clapping on concrete pavement, various sirens of many sorts, all of this, we assume, just drifts around us, if we live in a large urban environment.  Truly, it does not.  All of this noise rather passes through our consciousness, its presence is noted, evaluated and generally ignored as non-threatening.  It still leaves an imprint.  An imprint that can be hard to recall, possible, but it is there and every day there is mental memory storage space, much as a computer hard-drive, that is taken up.

So, in evaluating a student-learning environment, the Ambient Audio Quotient of Stimuli must be addressed as part of the EJM calculations.  So often it is simply ignored, or worse yet not approached empathically from an age appropriate angle as it will impact the particular students who will be present in a particular classroom.  Massive amounts of studied material, by experts on Child Psychology and Education are available.  These are experts who have made a solid career out of collecting such data through observation, questionnaires and various other means of testing.  Sometimes, frequently, even the observation part(s) of these publications are not actually done by the authors, or experts, but by various assistants, sub-ordinates, graduate students sent to observe and/or written evaluations from the real-time classroom teachers.  This data is then reviewed, studied, by the expert and complied into their own conclusions.

I will not waste a lot of anyone’s time and even attempt to flesh out the, to my mind, well – horrible – affect, 99% of this type of reference has on the real-life teaching and learning experience.  So much of it is ill-founded.  So much of it applies to such narrowly allowed real-time real-life circumstances.  There must be a significant difference between a classroom in downtown Brooklyn and a rural classroom in Vermont.  Night and day.  Between a Fifth Grade Class alone and one that is mixed with Sixth Grade Students, due to students numbers.  Ratios of teachers to students in Public vs. Private schools. 

However, when reduced to mathematical calculation, these differences can be evaluated and addressed.  Ambient and highly fluctuating ambient sound stimulus present in an dense urban environment can be neutralized almost to a quotient of 1from a quotient of 2, by experimenting with echo reducing wall paneling or even possibly a “White Noise Generator”.  As each unique classroom Ambient Sound Quotient exists, in order to maximize learning, where either the teacher’s presentations or the simple capacity to quietly concentrate of the material being studied, it must be addressed.

In a practical sense, corkboard absorbs much more sound, thereby reducing echoing, than hard painted solid walls.  Fabric wallpaper.  Even large matt paper posters can reduce ambient sound vibration.  Cloth flags and banners.  Many helpful steps can be taken with a minimal capital expense.  Rebuilding or reconstruction of whole classrooms is not required. A simple 10% (or less) opaque (highly translucent) cloth introducing less than a 1 cm baffle between large glass windows and the room interior can make a significant difference to reducing distracting ambient sound. Many solutions, very low-cost solutions, are possible, with a minimum of creative thought, or approach.

(Click on image to enlarge and focus.)

From this second graphic, it is apparent that to move from the Ambient, (disruptive stimuli) to the Awareness (conscious stimuli) The Audio Quotient must be neutralized.

To be continued ...

Thank you for joining me here and joy be unto you.

All material in this blog is from “Equations for the Joyous Mind”  © 2016 by Dale Clarence Peterson

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