Effects of Indoor Environmental Quality on Concentration

There is a lack of long-term research on the effects of indoor environmental quality on concentration in real environments using objective measurements. Concentration is an essential part of learning and processing information. Since pupils and students spend large parts of their days indoors, it can have major effects on their concentration. This paper presents an environmental monitoring system for collecting continuous indoor environmental quality data and studies the relationship between indoor environmental quality and pupil concentration in a real-life environment. An 18-week pilot was conducted in one school in Northern Finland during the autumn in 2018. Pupils (n=83) and teachers (n=4) in four classrooms participated in the study. Data on pupil concentration was collected twice a week via paper-format concentration tests. Additionally, teachers evaluated pupil concentration on a daily basis. A non-parametric correlation analysis (Spearman) was performed to investigate the associations between indoor environmental quality and pupil concentration. A statistically significant inverse association was found between pupil concentration and the relative humidity in all four classrooms, but no consistent associations with other indoor environmental quality parameters were found.