Yi Hoyoung, Pingsterhaus Ashly, Song Woonyoung
Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Lubbock, TX, United States.
Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, United States.
Front Psychol. 2021 Jun 28;12:682677. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.682677. eCollection 2021.
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.
冠状病毒大流行导致在公共场合建议/要求佩戴口罩。佩戴口罩会影响交流，尤其是在存在竞争噪声的情况下。在背景噪声过大可能造成交流挑战的嘈杂环境中，测量佩戴口罩对语音清晰度的潜在影响至关重要。本研究评估了佩戴透明口罩以及使用清晰语音以促进更好的言语交流的效果。我们在以下四种条件下评估了听众的单词识别分数：(1) 口罩类型条件（即不戴口罩、透明口罩和一次性口罩），(2) 呈现模式（即仅听觉和视听），(3) 说话风格（即对话语音和清晰语音），以及 (4) 两种背景噪声类型（即语音塑造噪声和信噪比为 -5 的四说话者嘈杂声）。结果表明，在有噪声的情况下，与不戴口罩相比，说话者佩戴一次性口罩或透明口罩时，听众的表现较差。听众在听清晰语音时，在视听呈现中能正确识别更多单词。结果表明，口罩和背景噪声的存在会对听众的语音清晰度产生负面影响。透明口罩通过提供视觉信息有助于理解目标句子。使用清晰语音被证明可以缓解具有挑战性的交流情况，包括弥补视觉线索的缺乏和减少声学信号。
