Use of noise cancelling headphones to assist recall of spoken information in noisy environments

The need to hear, comprehend and be able to recall spoken information can exist in less than ideal listening conditions. Such a situation occurs within an aircraft cabin where, despite improvements in modern passenger aircraft, the acoustic properties of the cabin are less than ideal for understanding speech. It is important that passengers, who are untrained and or new to the environment, hear on-board safety announcements such as the preflight safety brief and recall this information in an emergency situation. The benefits of headphones that incorporate active noise control in such environments are the focus of a series of research studies. In this paper, we discuss the techniques developed to investigate if the use of active noise control headphones can improve the recall of speech in a noisy environment similar to that in a commercial aircraft cabin. The initial studies reflected favourably on the use of active noise control headphones under such condition which has led to a series of additional studies investigating their use under different auditory conditions such as with dual masking (i.e., noise and music) and for English second language speakers as well as seeking a comparable marker to demonstrate the effects of such noise on recall.