Children need acoustic access to the teacher and to class discussions for academic success. Today's classrooms in countries around the world, however, have been shown to be noisy and reverberant environments. Reverberation time is defined as the time in seconds that it takes for sound in a room to decrease in energy by 60 dB after sudden termination. (Data suggest, however, that everyday classroom noise can impede academic progress. It is known only in general terms that noise can be a far greater obstacle to children with hearing loss compared to peers with typical hearing. Less is known about the detrimental effects of noise combined with reverberation. Many studies have reported on the effects of noise and/or reverberation on speech perception by children. The only published study to date to measure speech perception by children with and children without hearing loss in several speech-to-noise ratios across several degrees of reverberation has been Finitzo-Hieber and Tillman. The children with hearing loss (mild to moderate; n(velence)12) and without hearing loss (n(velence)12) listened monaurally to speech presented from a speaker in 12 combinations of noise (four levels) and reverberation (three degrees). We will compare the results of that study to the present study in the Results section.
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