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Effects of Wearing Face Masks While Using Different Speaking Styles in Noise on Speech Intelligibility During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the recommended/required use of face masks in public. The use of a face mask compromises communication, especially in the presence of competing noise. It is crucial to measure the potential effects of wearing face masks on speech intelligibility in noisy envi...

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Autores principales: Yi, Hoyoung, Pingsterhaus, Ashly, Song, Woonyoung
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8292133/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34295288
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.682677
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author Yi, Hoyoung
Pingsterhaus, Ashly
Song, Woonyoung
author_facet Yi, Hoyoung
Pingsterhaus, Ashly
Song, Woonyoung
author_sort Yi, Hoyoung
collection PubMed
description The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the recommended/required use of face masks in public. The use of a face mask compromises communication, especially in the presence of competing noise. It is crucial to measure the potential effects of wearing face masks on speech intelligibility in noisy environments where excessive background noise can create communication challenges. The effects of wearing transparent face masks and using clear speech to facilitate better verbal communication were evaluated in this study. We evaluated listener word identification scores in the following four conditions: (1) type of mask condition (i.e., no mask, transparent mask, and disposable face mask), (2) presentation mode (i.e., auditory only and audiovisual), (3) speaking style (i.e., conversational speech and clear speech), and (4) with two types of background noise (i.e., speech shaped noise and four-talker babble at −5 signal-to-noise ratio). Results indicate that in the presence of noise, listeners performed less well when the speaker wore a disposable face mask or a transparent mask compared to wearing no mask. Listeners correctly identified more words in the audiovisual presentation when listening to clear speech. Results indicate the combination of face masks and the presence of background noise negatively impact speech intelligibility for listeners. Transparent masks facilitate the ability to understand target sentences by providing visual information. Use of clear speech was shown to alleviate challenging communication situations including compensating for a lack of visual cues and reduced acoustic signals.
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spelling pubmed-82921332021-07-21 Effects of Wearing Face Masks While Using Different Speaking Styles in Noise on Speech Intelligibility During the COVID-19 Pandemic Yi, Hoyoung Pingsterhaus, Ashly Song, Woonyoung Front Psychol Psychology The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the recommended/required use of face masks in public. The use of a face mask compromises communication, especially in the presence of competing noise. It is crucial to measure the potential effects of wearing face masks on speech intelligibility in noisy environments where excessive background noise can create communication challenges. The effects of wearing transparent face masks and using clear speech to facilitate better verbal communication were evaluated in this study. We evaluated listener word identification scores in the following four conditions: (1) type of mask condition (i.e., no mask, transparent mask, and disposable face mask), (2) presentation mode (i.e., auditory only and audiovisual), (3) speaking style (i.e., conversational speech and clear speech), and (4) with two types of background noise (i.e., speech shaped noise and four-talker babble at −5 signal-to-noise ratio). Results indicate that in the presence of noise, listeners performed less well when the speaker wore a disposable face mask or a transparent mask compared to wearing no mask. Listeners correctly identified more words in the audiovisual presentation when listening to clear speech. Results indicate the combination of face masks and the presence of background noise negatively impact speech intelligibility for listeners. Transparent masks facilitate the ability to understand target sentences by providing visual information. Use of clear speech was shown to alleviate challenging communication situations including compensating for a lack of visual cues and reduced acoustic signals. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-06-28 /pmc/articles/PMC8292133/ /pubmed/34295288 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.682677 Text en Copyright © 2021 Yi, Pingsterhaus and Song. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Yi, Hoyoung
Pingsterhaus, Ashly
Song, Woonyoung
Effects of Wearing Face Masks While Using Different Speaking Styles in Noise on Speech Intelligibility During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title Effects of Wearing Face Masks While Using Different Speaking Styles in Noise on Speech Intelligibility During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_full Effects of Wearing Face Masks While Using Different Speaking Styles in Noise on Speech Intelligibility During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_fullStr Effects of Wearing Face Masks While Using Different Speaking Styles in Noise on Speech Intelligibility During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Effects of Wearing Face Masks While Using Different Speaking Styles in Noise on Speech Intelligibility During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_short Effects of Wearing Face Masks While Using Different Speaking Styles in Noise on Speech Intelligibility During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_sort effects of wearing face masks while using different speaking styles in noise on speech intelligibility during the covid-19 pandemic
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8292133/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34295288
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.682677
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