Poor Listening Conditions Impair Memory for Intelligible Lectures: Implications for Acoustic Classroom Standards

2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 257-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Ljung ◽  
Patrik Sörqvist ◽  
Anders Kjellberg ◽  
Anne-Marie Green
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Background Noise ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Broadband Noise ◽  
Speech Signals ◽  
Reverberation Time ◽  
Signal To Noise ◽  
Memory And Learning ◽  
What Is Said ◽  
Degraded Speech

This paper reports two experiments on the effects of degraded speech signals on memory for spoken lectures. Experiment 1 showed that broadband noise impairs university students' memory for a spoken lecture, even though the participants heard what was said. Experiment 2 showed that reverberation has detrimental effects to school adolescents' memory for spoken lectures, similar to broadband noise. The results suggest that poor listening conditions (resulting from background noise and/or long reverberation time) impair memory and learning, even if the conditions allow the listeners to hear what is said. Since the goal for students and pupils attending to lectures is to remember the lecture rather than just hearing what is said, the results presented here indicate that standards for acceptable signal-to-noise ratios and reverberation times in buildings designed for learning should consider the distinction between speech intelligibility and memory. Standards should be based on memory criteria instead of intelligibility criteria.

scholarly journals Speech Perception in Noise With Formant Enhancement for Older Listeners

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (9) ◽  
pp. 3290-3301
Author(s):  
Jingjing Guan ◽  
Chang Liu
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Background Noise ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Speech Signals ◽  
Speech Perception In Noise ◽  
Degraded Speech ◽  
Common Complaint ◽  
Hearing Thresholds ◽  
Speech Intelligibility Index ◽  
Speech Information

Purpose Degraded speech intelligibility in background noise is a common complaint of listeners with hearing loss. The purpose of the current study is to explore whether 2nd formant (F2) enhancement improves speech perception in noise for older listeners with hearing impairment (HI) and normal hearing (NH). Method Target words (e.g., color and digit) were selected and presented based on the paradigm of the coordinate response measure corpus. Speech recognition thresholds with original and F2-enhanced speech in 2- and 6-talker babble were examined for older listeners with NH and HI. Results The thresholds for both the NH and HI groups improved for enhanced speech signals primarily in 2-talker babble, but not in 6-talker babble. The F2 enhancement benefits did not correlate significantly with listeners' age and their average hearing thresholds in most listening conditions. However, speech intelligibility index values increased significantly with F2 enhancement in babble for listeners with HI, but not for NH listeners. Conclusions Speech sounds with F2 enhancement may improve listeners' speech perception in 2-talker babble, possibly due to a greater amount of speech information available in temporally modulated noise or a better capacity to separate speech signals from background babble.

Effect of Visual Cuing on Synthetic Speech Intelligibility: A Comparison of Native and Nonnative Speakers of English

1997 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 695-698 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary E. Reynolds ◽  
Donald Fucci ◽  
Z. S. Bond
Keyword(s):  
Background Noise ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Synthetic Speech ◽  
Signal To Noise ◽  
Noise Condition ◽  
Nonnative Speakers Of English

This study compared the effect of visual cuing on the intelligibility of DECtalk for native and nonnative speakers of English in both ideal listening conditions and in the presence of background noise at a signal to noise (S/N) ratio of + 10dB. Visual cuing improved DECtalk's intelligibility for normative speakers more than for native speakers, especially in the background noise condition. Implications of these findings and the need for further research are discussed.

Effects of Speech Rate, Background Noise, and Simulated Hearing Loss on Speech Rate Judgment and Speech Intelligibility in Young Listeners

2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (01) ◽  
pp. 028-039 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth M. Adams ◽  
Robert E. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Background Noise ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Speech Rate ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Moderate Correlation ◽  
Signal To Noise ◽  
Noise Ratio

Purpose: To study the effect of noise on speech rate judgment and signal-to-noise ratio threshold (SNR50) at different speech rates (slow, preferred, and fast). Research Design: Speech rate judgment and SNR50 tasks were completed in a normal-hearing condition and a simulated hearing-loss condition. Study Sample: Twenty-four female and six male young, normal-hearing participants. Results: Speech rate judgment was not affected by background noise regardless of hearing condition. Results of the SNR50 task indicated that, as speech rate increased, performance decreased for both hearing conditions. There was a moderate correlation between speech rate judgment and SNR50 with the various speech rates, such that as judgment of speech rate increased from too slow to too fast, performance deteriorated. Conclusions: These findings can be used to support the need for counseling patients and their families about the potential advantages to using average speech rates or rates that are slightly slowed while conversing in the presence of background noise.

scholarly journals Acoustic quality assessment in a classroom through simulations and measurements

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (72) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eriberto Oliveira do Nascimento ◽  
Paulo Henrique Trombetta Zannin
Keyword(s):  
Background Noise ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Reverberation Time ◽  
Vocal Health ◽  
Quality Requirements ◽  
Transmission Index ◽  
Speech Transmission ◽  
Acoustic Quality ◽  
Acoustic Comfort ◽  
Minimum Requirements

The acoustic quality in a classroom directly impacts the educational relationship between the student and the teacher, reducing speech intelligibility. In addition, inadequate acoustic comfort burdens the vocal health of teachers. This study evaluated a classroom at the Federal University of Paraná, Campus Centro Politécnico, to verify its acoustic quality. The measurements of the acoustics descriptors: Reverberation Time (RT), Definition (D50), Central Time (Ts), Early Decay Time (EDT) were performed according to the ISO 3382-2 standard, concerning Noise Curves (NC) and Background Noise (BGN) these were evaluated by the  NBR 10152 and S12.2 standards. The Speech Transmission Index (STI) was measured according to IEC 60268-16 and evaluated according to ISO 9921. The useful-detrimental ratio (U50) and the other descriptors were simulated in the ODEON software version 11. Thus, the results showed that the evaluated room did not meet the minimum requirements in terms of acoustic quality, for the descriptors RT, STI, Ts, D50, RF, and NC. Simultaneously, the RT and STI were also outside the limits established by the German and Finnish standards. Therefore, it is concluded that the evaluated classroom did not reach the minimum acoustic quality requirements.

Effect of Synchronized Linked Band Selection on Speech Intelligibility of Bilateral Cochlear Implant Users

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Gajęcki ◽  
Waldo Nogueira
Keyword(s):  
Electrical Stimulation ◽  
Cochlear Implant ◽  
Background Noise ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Band Selection ◽  
Signal To Noise ◽  
Intelligibility Test ◽  
Bilateral Cochlear Implant

Normal hearing listeners have the ability to exploit the audio input perceived by each ear to extract target information in challenging listening scenarios. Bilateral cochlear implant (BiCI) users, however, do not benefit as much as normal hearing listeners do from a bilateral input. In this study, we investigate the effect that bilaterally linked band selection, bilaterally synchronized electrical stimulation and ideal binary masks (IdBMs) have on the ability of 10 BiCIs to understand speech in background noise. The performance was assessed through a sentence-based speech intelligibility test, in a scenario where the speech signal was presented from the front and the interfering noise from one side. The linked band selection relies on the most favorable signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) ear, which will select the bands to be stimulated for both CIs. Results show that no benefit from adding a second CI to the most favorable SNR side was achieved for any of the tested bilateral conditions. However, when using both devices, speech perception results show that performing linked band selection, besides delivering bilaterally synchronized electrical stimulation, leads to an improvement compared to standard clinical setups. Moreover, the outcomes of this work show that by applying IdBMs, subjects achieve speech intelligibility scores similar to the ones without background noise.

Natural Speech Intelligibility in Theatres in Relation to Their Acoustics

2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 293-311
Author(s):  
Maarten P.M. Luykx ◽  
Martijn L.S. Vercammen
Keyword(s):  
Background Noise ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Speech Sound ◽  
Sound Level ◽  
Natural Speech ◽  
Noise Levels ◽  
Signal To Noise ◽  
Background Levels ◽  
Noise Ratio

There is a certain tendency in the design of theatres to make the halls quite large. From a perspective of natural speech intelligibility and strength of speech this is disadvantageous, because an actor's voice has a certain, limited loudness and consequently the signal-to-noise ratio at the listener may become too low. Based on the influence of signal/noise ratio on speech intelligibility, it is deduced that the strength G ≥ 6 dB and room volumes have to be limited to 4000–4500 m3 in order to maintain sufficient loudness for natural speech. Sound level measurements during performances with natural speech in a theatre have been performed, to determine background noise levels in the hall due to the audience and to investigate the signal-to-noise ratio of the actors voice at the audience. The background levels are mainly determined by installation noise and not by the influence of the audience.

Chinese speech intelligibility of children in noisy and reverberant environments

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (10) ◽  
pp. 1357-1363
Author(s):  
Jianxin Peng ◽  
Shengju Wu
Keyword(s):  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Reverberation Time ◽  
Critical Factors ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Signal To Noise ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Reverberant Environments ◽  
Noise Ratio ◽  
Intelligibility Score

Reverberation time and signal-to-noise ratio in classrooms are critical factors to speech intelligibility. In this study, the combined effect of reverberation time and signal-to-noise ratio on Chinese speech intelligibility of children was investigated in 28 elementary school classrooms in China. The results show that Chinese speech intelligibility scores increase with an increase of signal-to-noise ratio and the age of children, and decrease with an increase of reverberation time in classrooms. Younger children require higher signal-to-noise ratio and shorter reverberation time than older children to understand the speech. The A-weighted signal-to-noise ratio combined with a wide range of reverberation time can be used to predict speech intelligibility score and serve as a criterion for classroom design for elementary schools.

Research on Improving Room Sound Field of Exhibition Building

2014 ◽  
Vol 1065-1069 ◽  
pp. 1634-1637
Author(s):  
Qian Li ◽  
Dong Sheng Liu
Keyword(s):  
Background Noise ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Simulation Analysis ◽  
Sound Field ◽  
Reverberation Time ◽  
High Background ◽  
Exhibition Space ◽  
Commercial Activities ◽  
Broadcasting System ◽  
High Background Noise

Generally, there is a high background noise and long reverberation time and poor speech intelligibility in exhibition space due to its big crowd and often commercial promotional activities so that communication is very hard, commercial activities broadcasting system is also difficult to ensure that customers can clearly hear the propaganda content. In this paper, through measured background noise of the new exhibition center in Chengdu, we found the acoustic problem in exhibition space, then we did simulation analysis in some exhibition building and took some acoustical process to get a good sound field.

A Preliminary Investigation of the Perceived Smallest Sound Duration Change in a Room

1997 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-209
Author(s):  
D.-U. Jeong ◽  
F.R. Fricke
Keyword(s):  
Noise Level ◽  
Background Noise ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Preliminary Investigation ◽  
Room Acoustics ◽  
Reverberation Time ◽  
Background Noise Level ◽  
Intelligibility Test ◽  
Sound Duration

The present work aims at producing a test, similar to a speech intelligibility test, which can be used to rate the acoustic quality of rooms for music. Listeners' perceptions of the duration of sounds were investigated in an attempt to find a useful indicator of the acoustics of a room for music and speech. The research design was based on a discrimination task and a 2AFC experimental procedure. Two experiments were carried out in which two acoustic variables, reverberation time and background noise level, were varied and listeners' smallest perceivable sound duration changes were measured. It was found that the listeners' duration perceptions were significantly influenced by the reverberation time and background noise level of the listening environment, and that these discrimination procedures may form the basis for room acoustics assessments.

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