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Communication is a fundamental aspect of human interaction, yet many individuals must speak in less-than-ideal acoustic environments daily. Adapting their speech to ensure intelligibility in these varied settings can impose a significant cognitive burden. Understanding this burden on talkers has significant implications for the design of public spaces and workplace environments, as well as speaker training programs. The aim of this study was to examine how room acoustics and speaking style affect cognitive load through self-rating of mental demand and pupillometry. Nineteen adult native speakers of American English were instructed to read sentences in both casual and clear speech-a technique known to enhance intelligibility-across three levels of reverberation (0.05 s, 1.2 s, and 1.83 s at 500-1000 Hz). Our findings revealed that speaking style consistently affects the cognitive load on talkers more than room acoustics across the tested reverberation range. Specifically, pupillometry data suggested that speaking in clear speech elevates the cognitive load comparably to speaking in a room with long reverberation, challenging the conventional view of clear speech as an 'easy' strategy for improving intelligibility. These results underscore the importance of accounting for talkers' cognitive load when optimizing room acoustics and developing speech production training.

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PURPOSE: The goal was to evaluate whether implicit talker familiarization via an interactive computer game, designed for this study, could improve children's word recognition in classroom noise. It was hypothesized that, regardless of age, children would perform better when recognizing words spoken by the talker who was heard during the game they played. METHOD: Using a one-group pretest-posttest experimental design, this study examined the impact of short-term implicit voice exposure on children's word recognition in classroom noise. Implicit voice familiarization occurred via an interactive computer game, played at home for 10 min a day for 5 days. In the game, children (8-12 years) heard one voice, intended to become the "familiar talker." Pre- and postfamiliarization, children identified words in prerecorded classroom noise. Four conditions were tested to evaluate talker familiarity and generalization effects. RESULTS: Results demonstrated an 11% improvement when recognizing words spoken by the voice heard in the game ("familiar talker"). This was observed only for words that were heard in the game and did not generalize to unfamiliarized words. Before familiarization, younger children had poorer recognition than older children in all conditions; however, after familiarization, there was no effect of age on performance for familiarized stimuli. CONCLUSIONS: Implicit short-term exposure to a talker has the potential to improve children's speech recognition. Therefore, leveraging talker familiarity through gameplay shows promise as a viable method for improving children's speech-in-noise recognition. However, given that improvements did not generalize to unfamiliarized words, careful consideration of exposure stimuli is necessary to optimize this approach.

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PURPOSE: The purpose of this project is to assess the acoustical conditions in which optimal intelligibility and low listening difficulty can be achieved in real classrooms for elementary students, taking into consideration the effects of dysphonic voice and typical classroom noise. METHOD: Speech intelligibility tests were performed in six elementary classrooms with 80 normal-hearing students aged 7-11 years. The speech material was produced by a female actor using a normal voice quality and simulating a dysphonic voice. The stimuli were played by a Head and Torso Simulator. Child babble noise and classrooms with different reverberation times were used to obtain a Speech Transmission Index (STI) range from 0.2 to 0.7, corresponding to the categories bad, poor, fair, and good. RESULTS: The results showed a statistically significant decrease in intelligibility when the speaker was dysphonic, in STI higher than 0.33. The rating of listening difficulty showed a significantly greater difficulty in perceiving the dysphonic voice. In addition, younger children showed poorer performance and greater listening difficulty compared with older children when listening to the normal voice quality. Both groups were equally impacted when the voice was dysphonic. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggested that better acoustic conditions are needed for children to reach a good level of intelligibility and to reduce listening difficulty if the teacher is suffering from voice problems. This was true for children regardless of grade level, highlighting the importance of ensuring more favorable acoustic conditions for children throughout all elementary schools. SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23504487.

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PURPOSE: Good verbal signals and low background noise are key factors for all children to maximize understanding of what is being taught. Classroom shape, surroundings, and even furnishings change how the environment "sounds" and how speech is "heard" in the classroom. Classroom acoustics is perhaps one of the most important, but often least considered, factors when designing a classroom. This systematic review aimed to characterize the relationship between intelligibility of speech and room acoustics in elementary schools based on the available evidence. METHOD: Eligible studies were identified using two computerized databases: PubMed and Scopus. In total, 23 publications met our inclusion criteria: (a) Participants must have been from elementary schools, (b) acoustic characterization of the classroom must have been provided, (c) intelligibility tests must have been performed, and (d) articles were written in English. RESULTS: After identifying the parameters and tests used to quantify the intelligibility of speech, the speech intelligibility scores were analyzed in relation with acoustical parameters found in the articles, particularly signal-to-noise ratio and speech transmission index. Our results highlighted the negative effect on intelligibility associated with poor transmission of the speech and poor classroom acoustics caused by long reverberation times and high background noise. CONCLUSION: Good classroom acoustics is needed to improve speech intelligibility and, therefore, increase children's academic success.

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Voice disorders can reduce the speech intelligibility of affected speakers. This study evaluated the effect of noise, voice disorders, and room acoustics on vowel intelligibility, listening easiness, and the listener's reaction time. Three adult females with dysphonia and three adult females with normal voice quality recorded a series of nine vowels of American English in /h/-V-/d/ format (e.g., "had"). The recordings were convolved with two oral-binaural impulse responses acquired from measurements in two classrooms with 0.4 and 3.1 s of reverberation time, respectively. The stimuli were presented in a forced-choice format to 29 college students. The intelligibility and the listening easiness were significantly higher in quiet than in noisy conditions, when the speakers had normal voice quality compared to a dysphonic voice, and in low reverberated environments compared to high reverberated environments. The response time of the listener was significantly longer for speech presented in noisy conditions compared to quiet conditions and when the voice was dysphonic compared with healthy voice quality.

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This study explored the effects of wearing face masks on classroom communication. The effects of three different types of face masks (fabric, surgical, and N95 masks) on speech intelligibility (SI) presented to college students in auralized classrooms were evaluated. To simulate realistic classroom conditions, speech stimuli were presented in the presence of speech-shaped noise with a signal-to-noise ratio of +3 dB under two different reverberation times (0.4 s and 3.1 s). The use of fabric masks yielded a significantly greater reduction in SI compared to the other masks. Therefore, surgical masks or N95 masks are recommended in teaching environments.

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Several studies have shown so far that poor acoustics inside classrooms negatively affects the teaching and learning processes, especially at the lowest grades of education. However, the extent to which noise exposure or excessive reverberation affect well-being of children at school in their early childhood is still unanswered, as well as their awareness of noise disturbance. This work is a pilot study to investigate to which extent classroom acoustics affects the perceived well-being and noise disturbance in first graders. About 330 pupils aged from 6 to 7 years participated in the study. They belonged to 20 classes of 10 primary schools located in Torino (Italy), where room acoustic measurements were performed and where noise level was monitored during classes. The school buildings and the classrooms were balanced between socioeconomic status and acoustic conditions. Trained experimenters administered questionnaires in each class, where pupils answered all together during the last month of the school year (May). Questions included the happiness scale, subscales assessing self-esteem, emotional health, relationship at home and with friends, enjoyment of school, intensity and noise disturbance due to different sound sources, and quality of voice. The findings of the study suggest that long reverberation times, which are associated with poor classroom acoustics as they generate higher noise levels and degraded speech intelligibility, bring pupils to a reduced perception of having fun and being happy with themselves. Furthermore, bad classroom acoustics is also related to an increased perception of noise intensity and disturbance, particularly in the case of traffic noise and noise from adjacent school environments. Finally, happy pupils reported a higher perception of noise disturbance under bad classroom acoustic conditions, whereas unhappy pupils only reported complaints in bad classroom acoustics with respect to the perception of pleasances with himself or herself and of fitting in at school. Being a mother tongue speaker is a characteristic of children that brings more chances of attending classes in good acoustics, of being less disturbed, and of having more well-being, and richer districts presented better acoustic conditions, in turn resulting in richer districts also revealing a greater perception of well-being.