Research Interests & Abilities

• room acoustics
• speech communication in rooms
• effects of noise
• concert hall acoustics
• building acoustics

Major Research Activities

JSB is interested in the influence of noise and room acoustics in classroom settings on the educational development of children. This is a complex multi-disciplinary issue where real progress can only be achieved by a pooling of skills from many different areas. My particular interest and expertise concerns the effects of noise and room acoustics on the comprehension of speech by children. This needs to be studied as a function of the age of the children as well as for other characteristics such as hearing and other types of impairment. Often previous work has failed because it had not included researchers from all of the necessary disciplines. (e.g. studies by audiologist may ignore important room acoustics issue. etc.). It is not just a question of avoiding the more obvious previous acoustical disasters such as open plan classrooms and incredibly noisy day care centres, almost every reported measurement of noise levels in classrooms indicates that the noise will interfere with speech communication and especially so for younger children. Room acoustics knowledge has advanced; we must use this knowledge to develop a better understanding of the effects of noise and room acoustics on speech communication in classrooms and eventually of the ultimate educational outcomes.

CLLRNet Research Projects

• Speech Recognition in Classrooms  (Project Leader)
• Impact of noise on academic skills and learning

Last Modified: July 11 2002 08:49:43.