The effect of semantic context on speech intelligibility in reverberant rooms

Although it is well known that semantic context affects speech intelligibility and that different reverberant rooms affect speech intelligibility differentially, these effects have seldom been studied together. Revised SPIN sentences in a background of Gaussian noise in simulated rooms with reverberation time (T60) of 1 and 0.25 s were used. The carrier phrase and the target word of the speech stimuli were manipulated to be either in the same room or in different rooms. As expected, intelligibility of predictable sentences was higher compared to unpredictable sentences-the context effect. The context effect was higher in the low-reverberant room as compared to the high-reverberant room. When the carrier phrase and target words were in different rooms, the context effect was higher when the carrier phrase was in the low-reverberant room and target word in the high-reverberant room. For predictable sentences, changing the target word from high-reverberation to low reverberation with a high reverberant carrier increased intelligibility. However, with a low-reverberant carrier and different rooms for the target word, there was no change in intelligibility. Overall, it could be concluded that there is an interaction between semantic context and room acoustics for speech intelligibility.