Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Wake up! Fire! Do your homework!
So Forbes came out today saying that the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Children's Hospital, Columbus, Ohio has done a study that shows smoke alarms that play a precorded message from a kid's mother works better than your usual loud beep.
Apparently, children don't respond to the conventional alarms most houses are equipped with. Perhaps because it's so loud and annoying you forget everything when it goes off. And then again when it goes off a few seconds later, and again and again.
In the study, published in the journal Pediatrics, they tested 24 children (age 6-12) in their deepest sleep with two different smoke alarms. 96 percent of children woke up to their parents voice, a giant leap from the only 58 percent who woke up to the regular alarm (apparently one child didn't wake up to either). On average, it took 20 seconds for a child to awake to their parents voice, and 3 minutes to awake to the beeping tone.
The mothers voices were recorded separately for each child, and were universally in an urgent tone and used the child's first name. No studies have been done as to whether any woman's voice sounding urgent would work, or if it has to be the mother, nor have any studies been done without the use of the child's first name.
Could this signal an onslaught of new recordable smoke alarms? The findings here (although this is just one study) will probably prompt at least one company to offer the option. I wonder, also, if the way the children are usually awoken affects the findings. For example, did the children who woke up to the tone alarm regularly use an alarm clock tone to wake up in the morning or do their parents wake them up every morning?
These smoke alarms would have shorter lives, as well, since voice alarms have been shown to be less effective for older people. Smoke alarms (at my age) are almost an annoyance, what with candles and learning to cook etc., but they can really be a lifesaver (remember to put the batteries back in after you finish cooking).
But lookout, because these new alarms may be more in use by the time we have kids. Wake up!
Apparently, children don't respond to the conventional alarms most houses are equipped with. Perhaps because it's so loud and annoying you forget everything when it goes off. And then again when it goes off a few seconds later, and again and again.
In the study, published in the journal Pediatrics, they tested 24 children (age 6-12) in their deepest sleep with two different smoke alarms. 96 percent of children woke up to their parents voice, a giant leap from the only 58 percent who woke up to the regular alarm (apparently one child didn't wake up to either). On average, it took 20 seconds for a child to awake to their parents voice, and 3 minutes to awake to the beeping tone.
The mothers voices were recorded separately for each child, and were universally in an urgent tone and used the child's first name. No studies have been done as to whether any woman's voice sounding urgent would work, or if it has to be the mother, nor have any studies been done without the use of the child's first name.
Could this signal an onslaught of new recordable smoke alarms? The findings here (although this is just one study) will probably prompt at least one company to offer the option. I wonder, also, if the way the children are usually awoken affects the findings. For example, did the children who woke up to the tone alarm regularly use an alarm clock tone to wake up in the morning or do their parents wake them up every morning?
These smoke alarms would have shorter lives, as well, since voice alarms have been shown to be less effective for older people. Smoke alarms (at my age) are almost an annoyance, what with candles and learning to cook etc., but they can really be a lifesaver (remember to put the batteries back in after you finish cooking).
But lookout, because these new alarms may be more in use by the time we have kids. Wake up!
# posted by ange : 10:04 AM
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