Abstract:

A child's ability to hear and communicate with speech in the classroom is influenced by several factors, including talker characteristics (level, clarity, dialect), the acoustical environment (noise level, reverberance), and listener characteristics (hearing status, cognitive development, language level, exposure to English). This presentation will review and assess the relative contribution of each factor to the communication requirements of the classroom. An emphasis will be placed on the large individual differences in listener characteristics that are likely to exist in contemporary classrooms, and their impact on the requirements of the acoustic environment for effective speech communication. Recent findings from this laboratory and from other researchers that document the range of speech communication abilities in both difficult and easy listening conditions among school-age children will be reviewed. Finally, an initial proposal for acceptable levels of background noise and reverberance in classrooms based on these findings will be offered. The rationale for this proposal is that noise and reverberance levels must be low enough to allow children with a wide range of listener characteristics to communicate with speech easily and effectively in the classroom. [See NOISE-CON Proceedings for full paper.]