TY - GEN
T1 - Objective and subjective speech intelligibility assessments in primary school classrooms
AU - Astolfi, Arianna
AU - Bottalico, Pasquale
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - This work describes the results of speech intelligibility tests and measurements performed in primary school classrooms. The analyses were carried out in two laboratory-classrooms characterized by 1.6 s and 0.7 s occupied midfrequency reverberation time (RT), in presence of different types of noise. Speech babble and fan-coil noise were emitted into the room, traffic noise came from an external source and impact noise was generated on the floor upstairs the classroom. A total of about 3700 tests were submitted to 470 students from 7 to 11 year olds. The correlations between speech intelligibility and objective parameters are obtained for children of different age. The availability of data referred to two different conditions, with high and low RT respectively, allows to determine intelligibility decrease due to reverberation. A further research outcome is the effect on speech intelligibility of the different types of noise. One of the main finding of the work, as found in a previous research, is that younger children need more restrictive acoustical condition than older ones, for achieving the same level of speech intelligibility. A good correspondence was found between speech intelligibility and listening difficulty, the latter evaluated on a 5-point scale from "very easy" to "very difficult".
AB - This work describes the results of speech intelligibility tests and measurements performed in primary school classrooms. The analyses were carried out in two laboratory-classrooms characterized by 1.6 s and 0.7 s occupied midfrequency reverberation time (RT), in presence of different types of noise. Speech babble and fan-coil noise were emitted into the room, traffic noise came from an external source and impact noise was generated on the floor upstairs the classroom. A total of about 3700 tests were submitted to 470 students from 7 to 11 year olds. The correlations between speech intelligibility and objective parameters are obtained for children of different age. The availability of data referred to two different conditions, with high and low RT respectively, allows to determine intelligibility decrease due to reverberation. A further research outcome is the effect on speech intelligibility of the different types of noise. One of the main finding of the work, as found in a previous research, is that younger children need more restrictive acoustical condition than older ones, for achieving the same level of speech intelligibility. A good correspondence was found between speech intelligibility and listening difficulty, the latter evaluated on a 5-point scale from "very easy" to "very difficult".
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M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84870020269
SN - 9781615676903
T3 - 38th International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering 2009, INTER-NOISE 2009
SP - 1857
EP - 1865
BT - 38th International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering 2009, INTER-NOISE 2009
T2 - 38th International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering 2009, INTER-NOISE 2009
Y2 - 23 August 2009 through 26 August 2009
ER -