Lombard effect, intelligibility, ambient noise, and willingness to spend time and money in a restaurant amongst older adults

Abstract

Dining establishments are an essential part of the social experience. However, they are often characterized by high levels of background noise, which represents a barrier to effective communication. This particularly affects people suffering from hearing problems. Moreover, noise level exceeding normal conversational levels causes a phenomenon called the Lombard Effect, an involuntary tendency to increase the amount of vocal effort when talking in the presence of noise. Adults over 60 years represent the second largest population in the US and the majority of them suffer from some degree of hearing loss. The primary aim of the current study was to understand the effect of noise on vocal effort and speech intelligibility in a restaurant setting for adults over 60 years old with and without hearing loss. The secondary aim was to evaluate their perception of disturbance in communication and their willingness to spend time and money in a restaurant was affected by the varying levels of background noise. The results of this study showed background noise levels lower than 50 dB(A) will allow senior customers to minimize their vocal effort and to maximize their understanding of conversations, even for those with moderate to severe hearing loss. By setting a limit, it will also keep perceived disturbance low and willingness to spend time and money high among dining patrons.

A Field Survey of Acoustic Conditions in Primary and Kinder School Canteens

“…However, it is indubitable that they play an important social role, as students may more easily talk and interact among them, while having often significant impacts on workers attending the students activities. The literature on the acoustics of restaurants, canteens and eating spaces has received important contributions that pointed out the role of background noise control and room acoustics to limit Lombard effect [8][9][10][11][12], also leading to the definition of more specific criteria to explain and assess the acoustic requirements of such spaces [13]. However, information about primary or nursery school canteens is limited (some data can be found in [5]), despite the higher sensitivity to noise of the users and the smaller dimensions compared to ordinary eating premises.…”

“Great food, but the noise?”: Relationship between perceived sound quality survey and non acoustical factors in one hotel restaurant in Italy

“…7 –9 In particular, dining establishments are often characterized by high levels of background noise, which represents a barrier to good communication. 10…”

“…[7][8][9] In particular, dining establishments are often characterized by high levels of background noise, which represents a barrier to good communication. 10 In Bottalico et al, 11 the aim is to determine the minimum level of noise in a restaurant that starts the Lombard effect and how it relates to the perceived communication. The scope was to identify the specific point when the restaurant noise causes vocal discomfort for customers.…”

Detecting Lombard Speech Using Deep Learning Approach

“…The Lombard effect is known to impact the performance of speech recognition systems unfavorably. Various researchers have analyzed Lombard speech produced in different types and levels of noise for speech intelligibility [ 10 , 11 , 12 ], audio and audio-visual speech recognition [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ], speaker recognition [ 17 , 18 , 19 ], and emotional speech analysis [ 20 ]. Overall, an automatic speech recognition system (ASR) performance may be degraded when Lombard speech is present in the speech signal [ 15 , 16 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ].…”