Speech intelligibility of young school-aged children in the presence of real-life classroom noise.
We examined the ability of 40 young children (aged five to eight) to understand speech (monosyllables, spondees, trochees, and trisyllables) when listening in a background of real-life classroom noise. All children had some difficulty understanding speech when the noise was at levels found in many classrooms (i.e., 65 dBA). However, at an intermediate (-6 dB SNR) level, kindergarten and grade 1 children had much more difficulty than did older children. All children performed well in quiet, with results being comparable to or slightly better than those reported in previous studies, suggesting that the task was age appropriate and well understood. These results suggest that the youngest children in the school system, whose classrooms also tend to be among the noisiest, are the most susceptible to the effects of noise.
National Centre for Audiology, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada. Jamieson@nca.uwo.ca
Donald G
DG
Jamieson
Garry
G
Kranjc
Karen
K
Yu
William E
WE
Hodgetts
D000162:Acoustics; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004777:Environment; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects*; D012574:Schools; D013065:Speech Intelligibility / Q000502:physiology*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*