Human speech perception is remarkably robust to the effects of reverberation, due in part to mechanisms of perceptual constancy that compensate for the characteristics of the acoustic environment. A computer model of this phenomenon is described, which shows compensation for the effects of reverberation in a word identification task. The presence of reverberation is detected as a change in the mean-to-peak ratio of the simulated auditory nerve response. In turn, this leads to attenuation of peripheral auditory activity, which is achieved through an efferent feedback loop. The computer model provides a qualitative match to a range of perceptual data, suggesting that auditory mechanisms under efferent control might contribute to compensation for reverberation in particular speech identification tasks.