Spatial release from masking in reverberation for children and adults with normal hearing

The ability to perform spatial release from masking (SRM), i.e., benefiting from a spatial separation between target and distracting talkers, is an important developmental skill for children to navigate noisy environments such as classrooms. While studies on children’s SRM were mostly conducted in anechoic rooms or sound booths to date, little is yet known how realistic room acoustics including reverberation in everyday listening affect this ability. In this study, we measured SRM from children and adults with normal hearing in virtual acoustic environments that mimic typical classrooms with different acoustic conditions. Two virtual classrooms were simulated with mean mid-frequency reverberation times (RTs) of 0.4 and 1.1 s, one within and the other poorer than the recommendation of classroom acoustics standard (ANSI S12.60). Overall, children performed more poorly than adults on both speech intelligibility and SRM. Children’s speech intelligibility of the target speech masked by distractor voices was better under the less reverberant condition. Interestingly, while adults showed better SRM under RT = 0.4 s, children did not perform any differently between the two RT conditions. The findings will be discussed for further investigation and implications for classroom acoustic designs. [Work supported by the EU 7th Framework Programme, ITN FP7-607139.]