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The effects of lecture hall
noise and background speech on speech perception, measured
by word-to-picture matching, and listening comprehension,
measured by execution of oral instructions, were assessed in
a lecture hall setting. Lecture hall noise evoked a reliable
disruption in Students’ speech perception even under
conditions of short reverberation. RT had no effect on
speech perception in silence, but evoked a severe increase
in the impairments due to background sounds in all age
groups. For listening comprehension, impairments due to
background sounds were found in the Students, but a stronger
effect on listening comprehension, remaining significant
when speech perception was controlled. This indicates that
background speech affects higher-order cognitive processes
involved in Student’s comprehension. Student´s ratings of
the sound-induced disturbance were low overall and
uncorrelated to the actual disruption, indicating that the
Students did not consciously realize the detrimental
effects.
Keywords: Speech perception, Noise, Lecture Hall
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