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Reverberation
What is reverberation and why would it cause listening problems for our children in the classroom?
The average classroom will probably have hard walls, high ceilings, large glass windows, solid surfaces and some, if not all of the floor will be bare and uncarpeted.
Reverberation (also referred to as echo) is caused when sound reflects or “bounces” around the classroom off these hard surfaces.
The teacher’s speech signal (voice) contains low frequency vowel sounds and high frequency consonants. Nearly all of the information (meaning) is found in the higher speech frequencies, whilst most of the energy in speech is found in the lower frequency vowel sounds.
When speech is reflected off a hard surface, the low frequency sounds mask (obscure) the high frequency information, making speech intelligibility (understanding) difficult in a room with unacceptable reverberation (echo).
