Using personal response systems to assess speech perception within the classroom: an approach to determine the...

The assessment of the combined effect of classroom acoustics and sound field amplification (SFA) on children's speech perception within the "live" classroom poses a challenge to researchers. The goals of this study were to determine: (1) Whether personal response system (PRS) hand-held voting cards, together with a closed-set speech perception test (Chear Auditory Perception Test [CAPT]), provide an appropriate method for evaluating speech perception in the classroom; (2) Whether SFA provides better access to the teacher's speech than without SFA for children, taking into account vocabulary age, middle ear dysfunction or ear-canal wax, and home language.

Forty-four children from two school-year groups, year 2 (aged 6 years 11 months to 7 years 10 months) and year 3 (aged 7 years 11 months to 8 years 10 months) were tested in two classrooms, using a shortened version of the four-alternative consonant discrimination section of the CAPT. All children used a PRS to register their chosen response, which they selected from four options displayed on the interactive whiteboard. The classrooms were located in a 19th-century school in central London, United Kingdom. Each child sat at their usual position in the room while target speech stimuli were presented either in quiet or in noise. The target speech was presented from the front of the classroom at 65 dBA (calibrated at 1 m) and the presented noise level was 46 dBA measured at the center of the classroom. The older children had an additional noise condition with a noise level of 52 dBA. All conditions were presented twice, once with SFA and once without SFA and the order of testing was randomized. White noise from the teacher's right-hand side of the classroom and International Speech Test Signal from the teacher's left-hand side were used, and the noises were matched at the center point of the classroom (10sec averaging [A-weighted]). Each child's expressive vocabulary age and middle ear status were measured individually and each child's home language and any special educational needs were recorded.

All children were able to use the PRS handsets, and the CAPT speech perception test was sufficiently sensitive to highlight differences in perception in the different listening conditions. Scores were higher in quiet than in any noise condition. Results showed that group performance was significantly better with SFA than without it. The main demographic predictor of performance was expressive vocabulary age. SFA gave more benefit to the poorer performers in the group. There were no significant effects on performance relating to middle ear status or home language; however, the size of the population was too small to be able to fully explore these aspects in greater detail.

PRS together with the CAPT provides a sensitive measure for in situ speech perception testing within the classroom. Vocabulary age has a large effect on a child's ability to perceive the speech signal. SFA leads to improved speech perception, when the speech signal has been degraded because of poor acoustics or background noise and has a particularly large effect for children with lower vocabulary ages.