Objective Assessment of Binaural Benefit from Acoustical Treatment in Real Primary School Classrooms. 2023

Greta Minelli, and Giuseppina Emma Puglisi, and Arianna Astolfi, and Christopher Hauth, and Anna Warzybok
Department of Energy, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy.

Providing students with an adequate acoustic environment is crucial for ensuring speech intelligibility in primary school classrooms. Two main approaches to control acoustics in educational facilities consist of reducing background noise and late reverberation. Prediction models for speech intelligibility have been developed and implemented to evaluate the effects of these approaches. In this study, two versions of the Binaural Speech Intelligibility Model (BSIM) were used to predict speech intelligibility in realistic spatial configurations of speakers and listeners, considering binaural aspects. Both versions shared the same binaural processing and speech intelligibility backend processes but differed in the pre-processing of the speech signal. An Italian primary school classroom was characterized in terms of acoustics before (reverberation, T20 = 1.6 ± 0.1 s) and after (T20 = 0.6 ± 0.1 s) an acoustical treatment to compare BSIM predictions to well-established room acoustic measures. With shorter reverberation time, speech clarity and definition improved, as well as speech recognition thresholds (SRTs) (by up to ~6 dB), particularly when the noise source was close to the receiver and an energetic masker was present. Conversely, longer reverberation times resulted (i) in poorer SRTs (by ~11 dB on average) and (ii) in an almost non-existent spatial release from masking at an angle (SRM).

UI MeSH Term Description Entries
D009622 Noise Any sound which is unwanted or interferes with HEARING other sounds. Noise Pollution,Noises,Pollution, Noise
D010470 Perceptual Masking The interference of one perceptual stimulus with another causing a decrease or lessening in perceptual effectiveness. Masking, Perceptual,Maskings, Perceptual,Perceptual Maskings
D006801 Humans Members of the species Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D000162 Acoustics The branch of physics that deals with sound and sound waves. In medicine it is often applied in procedures in speech and hearing studies. With regard to the environment, it refers to the characteristics of a room, auditorium, theatre, building, etc. that determines the audibility or fidelity of sounds in it. (From Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2d ed) Acoustic
D012574 Schools Educational institutions. Primary Schools,Schools, Secondary,Secondary Schools,Primary School,School,School, Primary,School, Secondary,Schools, Primary,Secondary School
D013067 Speech Perception The process whereby an utterance is decoded into a representation in terms of linguistic units (sequences of phonetic segments which combine to form lexical and grammatical morphemes). Speech Discrimination,Discrimination, Speech,Perception, Speech

Related Publications

Greta Minelli, and Giuseppina Emma Puglisi, and Arianna Astolfi, and Christopher Hauth, and Anna Warzybok
January 2008, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,
Greta Minelli, and Giuseppina Emma Puglisi, and Arianna Astolfi, and Christopher Hauth, and Anna Warzybok
January 2012, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,
Greta Minelli, and Giuseppina Emma Puglisi, and Arianna Astolfi, and Christopher Hauth, and Anna Warzybok
April 2008, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,
Greta Minelli, and Giuseppina Emma Puglisi, and Arianna Astolfi, and Christopher Hauth, and Anna Warzybok
January 2020, Frontiers in neuroscience,
Greta Minelli, and Giuseppina Emma Puglisi, and Arianna Astolfi, and Christopher Hauth, and Anna Warzybok
November 1968, American annals of the deaf,
Greta Minelli, and Giuseppina Emma Puglisi, and Arianna Astolfi, and Christopher Hauth, and Anna Warzybok
May 2016, Clinical & experimental optometry,
Greta Minelli, and Giuseppina Emma Puglisi, and Arianna Astolfi, and Christopher Hauth, and Anna Warzybok
August 2002, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,
Greta Minelli, and Giuseppina Emma Puglisi, and Arianna Astolfi, and Christopher Hauth, and Anna Warzybok
May 2019, The New Zealand medical journal,
Greta Minelli, and Giuseppina Emma Puglisi, and Arianna Astolfi, and Christopher Hauth, and Anna Warzybok
January 2015, Journal of applied behavior analysis,
Greta Minelli, and Giuseppina Emma Puglisi, and Arianna Astolfi, and Christopher Hauth, and Anna Warzybok
November 1979, Gigiena i sanitariia,
Copied contents to your clipboard!