School-age children show poor use of spatial cues in reverberation for speech-in-speech perception

Abstract

Understanding speech is particularly difficult for children when there is competing speech in the background. When the target and masker talkers are spatially separated, as compared to co-located, the access to corresponding auditory spatial cues can provide release from masking, resulting in an intelligibility gain for speech-in-speech perception. When tested in free-field environments, previous work showed that children demonstrate adult-like spatial release from masking (SRM) by 9–10 years of age. However, in indoor environments where most critical communications occur such as classrooms, reverberation distorts the critical auditory spatial cues that lead to reduced SRM among adults. Little is known about how children process distorted auditory spatial cues for SRM to aid speech-in-speech perception. In this work, we measure SRM in children in virtual reverberant environments that mimic typical learning spaces. We show free-field measurements overestimate SRM maturation in realistic indoor environments. Children show a more protracted development of SRM in reverberation, likely due to immaturities in using distorted auditory spatial cues.