In a study published in Journal of Neuroscience, scientists from the University of Connecticut and the University of Chicago found that children with mothers who had a lower level of educational achievement, which they used as an indicator for socioeconomic status, had poorer hearing as indicated in a number of tests.
Ninth grade students were divided into two groups: one group had mothers with high school degrees or less while the other group had mothers with at least some college. In a test, the first group experienced sounds “less faithfully” than those in the second group.
Study author Erica Skoe told the Hartford Courant, "The analogy would be like listening to a telephone where there was static in the background. You'd be talking to someone, but there'd also be a 'shhhhhhhh' at the same time."
Skoe theorized to the Courant that it’s likely that children who struggle processing sounds experienced less conversation and more noise pollution than other children.
