Abstract
In educational contexts, learning processes focus on stimulation and development of students’ cognitive abilities, which, in turn, will improve their learning capacity. Cognition refers to the mental activity of the process and uses information in judgment. Based on that, this study investigates how acoustic perception responses can differ according to sound exposure inside a classroom for different time spans. To achieve this aim, students and lecturers were asked to answer a survey about classroom comfort, which included acoustic perception questions, at a controlled environment classroom from the Free University Bozen-Bolzano. Perception responses could be given at any moment of the lecture, but it was recommended to answer the survey after the lecture. Additionally, two data collection campaigns were considered for this investigation: (1) without absorbers and (2) with fake absorbers. Sound pressure levels in octave bands were collected using a microphone array during the lectures period. The post-treatment of this data consisted of calculating sound pressure level averages for two different time spans: the whole lecture period and for the moment which the participants answered the survey. Room acoustic measurements were carried out to characterize the environment on different scenarios.