Conference_programme: 18.3 - Voice accommodations in room acoustics and noise

Lecture: On the effects on teachers and children of using or not using sound-field systems in elementary school classrooms

Author(s): Whitling Susanna, Karjalainen Suvi, Von Lochow Heike, Lyberg-Åhlander Viveka

Summary:
Children who sit in the backrow of a classroom are missing out on higher partials of their teacher’s speech and this risk hamper their understanding of what is being taught. A shortage of phonological information affects children with hearing impairment worse than children with typical hearing, as they need more redundancy in a speech signal than others, in order to comprehend meaning. When teachers notice some children cannot hear them, they adapt their oral communication in different ways, e.g. by reiterations, driving up their relative phonation time, loudness and pitch of phonation and thus, increasing their vocal load. The overall purpose was to investigate the effect of minor interventions to improve clarity of speech by electronically enhancing high spectral properties of speech in teachers through the use of sound-field systems. We wanted to explore how sound systems with a teacher microphone and a loudspeaker for the classroom may affect children’s performance in a hearing comprehension test, in which the teacher gives oral instruction. A further aim was to explore teachers’ voice load and well-being.\n\nWe used two sound field systems available at the market and compared three conditions: the two systems (A and B) to no system (C). Six female voice healthy teachers participated. Children aged 8-12 (n=76), in five different classes at four different schools participated, 9/76 children were hearing impaired. The teachers were equipped with a voice accumulator, VoxLog, in all sound conditions, tracking their voice use, F0 and SPL during the work day and monitoring the competing sound levels. The children were tested through hearing comprehension tests. Teachers and children reported their perceptions of the sound conditions through questionnaires. \nBoth children and teachers preferred any sound field system compared to no system and the results of the voice measurements and comprehension tests corroborated this conclusion. \n

Corresponding author

Name: Dr Viveka Lyberg-Åhlander

e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Country: Sweden