Reverberation in a virtual office reduced memory for spoken stories and increased listening effort compared to anechoic conditions, but reducing the reverberation time from 1.0 s to 0.5 s made no measurable difference. Within a realistic office range, the specific level may not matter.
During single-task listening, memory for spoken stories was significantly better in the anechoic condition than in either the treated (p = .037) or untreated (p = .015) office, but the two offices did not differ from each other (p = .959).
During dual-tasking, secondary-task response times (the behavioural listening-effort measure) were significantly longer in both reverberant offices than in the anechoic condition (treated: p = .030; untreated: p = .021), but did not differ between the two offices (p = .994).
Secondary-task accuracy was paradoxically better in both reverberant offices than in the anechoic condition (p = .039 and p = .032), which the authors attribute to increased concentration in more challenging listening scenarios rather than reduced effort.
Single-blind randomized controlled trial. Sixty-four participants were randomized across two intervention arms and assessed at twelve weeks for the primary outcome…
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