Effects of reverberation on conversation in rooms

People usually understand what is being said to them, even when there is quite alot of background noise. However, anyone who has struggled to hold a conversation in a noisy cafeteria has some idea that a reverberant room can make it more difficult to hear what people are saying. Relatively little research has been done on the effects of reverberation on speech understanding in background noise. So, our current understanding of how exactly the reverberation has its effects is limited. At the same time, it seems to be a real problem in room design. Some rooms that are intended for social interaction make conversation almost impossible at busy times. This research proposal aims first to obtain a better understanding of how and why reverberation is detrimental and then to apply that understanding practically. The ultimate objective is to produce a computer program and a set of guidelines that an architect could use to predict the performance of a room from the plan alone.