HEAD-Genuit-Stiftung: Noise exposition in pre- and primary schools: Assessment using child-appropriate methods, analyses and evaluations

This project aims to incrementally develop child-oriented measurement, analysis and evaluation methods assessing noise exposure in day-care centers, kindergartens and elementary schools.

The first objective is to create a database on acoustical settings with respect to measurement techniques and analysis esteablished and developed for adults and, in parallel, to use child-oriented, binaural measurement techniques (such as children’s head and torso simulators). The second objective is to measure noise rating from children using a questionnaire to obtain a subjective evaluation of children’s noise perception. The final objective is to conduct listening experiments to investigate attention and speech intelligibility under noise conditions. These experiments are implemented in the mobile listening laboratory using acoustic virtual reality. Performance data from normal-hearing children and adults is collected to elucidate differences in attentional performance and speech comprehension. Controlling the acoustic scene within a series of experiments allow insights on the effects of individual components of the generated and auralized scene on attentional control of childre an adults.

Results of this project contributes insights into a) binaural assessment methods including children and adult head and torso simulaters, and b) to the psychoaoucstic research on speech intelligibility and attention of children in auditory complex scenes with noise.

This project was funded by the HEAD-Genuit-Stiftung.

Additional information can be found here.