Children spend a considerable amount of time in educational institutions, where they are constantly exposed to noisy sound environments, which has detrimental effects on children’s health and cognitive development. Extensive room acoustics measurements and long-term in-situ measurements in such institutions are scarce and are generally conducted using omnidirectional microphones. This study provides preliminary results of room acoustics in unoccupied conditions and in-situ noise measurements during occupancy, in classrooms and playrooms in Germany using an omnidirectional microphone, an adult HATS (head and torso simulator), and a child HATS. The results indicate that room acoustics of most of the sampled rooms need improvement (mid-frequency reverberation time, T₃₀ (s) = 0.6 (0.3–1.1) and clarity index, C₅₀ (dB) = 6.1 (1.6–10.4); speech transmission index (STI) = 0.7 (0.6–0.8); mean values and range); the sound pressure level (SPL) during activities was around 66 dB (A-weighted equivalent level SPL) in both classrooms and playrooms using omnidirectional measurements, which is somewhat lower than similar measurements in other countries that varied in measurement periods; psychoacoustics parameters relating to sound fluctuation (fluctuation strength and roughness) show variation with increasing room volumes; and that there may be some benefit in considering child HATS for in-situ noise measurements. While the validity of these results in relation to children’s perceptual evaluation (using questionnaires, etc.) is subject to future investigations, the results highlight some of the nuances in the choice of transducers in measurements with children and potential benefits of psychoacoustic parameters in complementing the SPL-based parameters in more comprehensively characterizing the noise environments in educational institutions.

The ability to focus ones attention in different acoustical environments has been thoroughly investigated in the past. However, recent technological advancements have made it possible to perform laboratory experiments in a more realistic manner. In order to investigate close-to-real-life scenarios, a classroom was modeled in virtual reality (VR) and an established paradigm to investigate the auditory selective attention (ASA) switch was translated from an audio-only version into an audiovisual VR setting. The new paradigm was validated with adult participants in a listening experiment, and the results were compared to the previous version. Apart from expected effects such as switching costs and auditory congruency effects, which reflect the robustness of the overall paradigm, a difference in error rates between the audio-only and the VR group was found, suggesting enhanced attention in the new VR setting, which is consistent with recent studies. Overall, the results suggest that the presented VR paradigm can be used and further developed to investigate the voluntary auditory selective attention switch in a close-to-real-life classroom scenario.

Children's development and education take place in educational buildings with highly complex acoustic scenes, including spatially distributed target speakers, many surrounding distracting sounds, and general background noises. Auditory selective attention, therefore, is a valuable tool to orient oneself, to focus on specific sound sources, and to extract relevant information. Until now, it is unknown to what extent children have developed the cognitive processes of intentional attention control in spatial situations and how they differ from adults. This work provides a paradigm to examine children's intentional switching of auditory selective attention that also allows to examine effects due to noisy and spatial sound environments presented virtually via headphones. A listening experiment was conducted in Germany with 24 children (6-10 years, 50% female) and 24 young adults (18-26 years, 50% female). First, results revealed higher error rates and lower reaction times in conditions with noise (relative to conditions without noise) for children, but not for adults. This assumes that children are more sensitive to noise and conclude faster with noise trials, taking errors into account. Second, although auditory attention flexibility reflected in attention switch and relevant information selection was comparable between children and adults, it was found that adults benefited from spatial cues when selecting the relevant information. This was not observed to the same extent in children. These results suggest that children's cognitive processes are affected at significantly lower noise levels than adults and that noise effect assessment methods should consider spatial aspects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Reverberation can degrade speech intelligibility and comprehension, increase cognitive load, and impair memory. Many studies examining reverberation effects use audio-only conditions and stationary background noise. Thus, it remains unclear to what extent findings generalise beyond laboratory setups. In the present study, we examine the influence of reverberation on memory and behavioural listening effort in a complex, audiovisual virtual reality (VR) environment. We implemented a virtual reality (VR) open-plan office with realistic room acoustics and time-varying background noise, including animated virtual agents. Three simulated room-acoustic conditions were compared: a free-field ( T ₃₀ = 0 s), an acoustically optimised office ( T ₃₀ = 0.5 s), and an untreated office ( T ₃₀ = 1.0 s). Under these conditions, N = 30 participants performed a dual-task. The primary Heard-Text Recall (HTR) task measured speech comprehension and memory. Participants listened to short stories narrated by two speakers and answered content-related questions. The vibrotactile secondary task measured listening effort. In single-tasking, memory for spoken content was significantly better in free-field than in both offices, with no significant difference between offices. In dual-tasking, vibrotactile response times indicated that listening effort increased in the presence of reverberation. Across single- and dual-task conditions, vibrotactile error rates decreased in the presence of reverberation, possibly due to elevated concentration in more difficult conditions. These findings suggest that room acoustics, compared to free-field environments, influence memory and listening effort in complex audiovisual VR and highlight the importance of incorporating reverberations when designing audiovisual environments for listening research.