Speech intelligibility improves with listening exposure in reverberant rooms

Emerging evidence suggests that speech perception in a reverberant room can be altered by recent listening exposure to the room. This result is interesting and important because it suggests that perceptual aspects related to room acoustics are not constant as a function of listening time, and it may help to better understand why hearing-impaired listeners often report difficulty with speech understanding in reverberation. Virtual auditory space techniques have been a key component of the research on this effect, since they allow both realistic simulation of reverberant room listening environments, and a level of stimulus control that would be impossible for real-room listening. Here, recent work demonstrating objective improvements in speech intelligibility with room exposure is summarized, with particular focus on details of the effect including its time course and its sensitivity to different speech materials. [Work supported by the NIH/NIDCD.]