Activity-Based Classroom Noise Auralisations

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)

Abstract

This repository contains the auralisation used in the article Seitz, J., Berger, J. R. & Fels, J. (2026) Activity-based classroom noise impacts children's speech perception and listening effort. Acta Acustica. 2026. [Manuscript submitted for publication]. It includes two auralisations of classroom activities: ClassroomNoise_1 depicting the sound environment of frontal teaching and ClassroomNoise_2 representing the sound environment of group work. Abstract This study investigated speech perception and both subjective and behavioral listening effort in 24 primary school children (ages 8–10) in activity-based classroom noise. They completed a word-to-picture matching task and a child-appropriate questionnaire in quiet, frontal teaching (FT), and group work (GW) conditions at typical classroom SNRs (0 dB,−3 dB). The FT noise was generated from typical classroom sounds without speech, while the GW noise consisted of four children’s multi-talker babble. Results showed significant effects of noise condition on all three measures. Speech perception declined from quiet to FT to GW, with poorer performance under more challenging SNRs. Error rates were about 12–19% higher in GW compared to FT at identical SNRs, suggesting stronger masking effects in multi-talker babble (MTB) noise. While listening effort in FT did not differ from quiet, both behavioral and subjective effort increased significantly under GW conditions, with the strongest impact at −3 dB. Additionally, a significant positive correlation between measures of listening effort was found. These findings highlight the importance of considering activity-based noise types, not solely noise level, in classroom acoustic interventions to support children’s listening and learning.

Authors 3

1. Julia Seitz Aachen Institute for Hearing Technology and Acoustics

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Institute for Hearing Technology and Acoustics, RWTH Aachen University

2. Jana R. Berger
3. Janina Fels Aachen

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   RWTH Aachen University