title: The effects of reverberation on a listener's ability to recognize target sentences in the presence of up to three synchronized masking sentences.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To determine the effects of room reverberation on target sentence recognition in the presence of 0-to-3 synchronous masking sentences.
  
  
  METHODS
  Target and masker sentences were presented through four loudspeakers (± 90° and ± 45° azimuth; 1m from the listener) in rooms having reverberation times (RT) of 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, and 1.1 s.
  
  
  METHODS
  Four groups of 13 listeners each participated in the study (N = 52).
  
  
  RESULTS
  In rooms with RTs of 0.2, 0.4, and 0.6 s, mean speech recognition scores (SRSs) were similar, with scores ranging from 96-100%, 90-95%, 75-80%, and 53-60%, when 0, 1, 2, and 3 competing sentences were present, respectively. However, in the room with a RT = 1.1 s, SRSs deteriorated significantly faster as the number of competing sentences increased; mean scores were 93%, 73%, 26%, and 10%, in the 0, 1, 2, 3, competing sentence condition, respectively. The majority of errors in SRSs (98%) resulted from listeners reporting words presented in masking sentences along with those in target sentences (mixing errors).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Results indicate that reverberation has a similar influence on SRSs measured in multi-talker environments, when room reverberation is ≤ 0.6 s. However, SRSs are dramatically reduced in the room with a RT = 1.1 s, even when only one competing talker is present.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, American University of Beirut, Lebanon. ks05@aub.edu.lb
authors.forename: Kim S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Abouchacra
authors.forename: Joan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Besing
authors.forename: Janet
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Koehnke
authors.forename: Tomasz
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Letowski
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001302:Audiometry, Speech; D001306:Auditory Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D005160:Facility Design and Construction; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception; D013997:Time Factors; D014732:Vibration; D055815:Young Adult