Auditory and visual cues in face-masked infant-directed speech

Cruz, Marisa; Pejovic, Jovana; Severino, Cátia; Vigário, Marina; Frota, Sónia

doi:10.21437/speechprosody.2022-130

Cited by 2 publications

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“…Second, face masks have been shown to degrade the acoustic signal and reduce speech intelligibility (e.g., Rahne et al, 2021 ; Thibodeau et al, 2021 ). Alterations in the acoustic signal were patent in our stimuli (Cruz et al, 2022 ), and were clearly perceived by adult speakers. However, there was no direct and momentary effect of mask use in the infants' word segmentation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 61%

“…We investigated whether word segmentation could be altered if visual speech cues are occluded by a face mask. In addition, the acoustic signal is degraded in face-masked speech (e.g., Rahne et al, 2021 ; Thibodeau et al, 2021 ; Cruz et al, 2022 ), and no study so far has addressed whether word segmentation might be affected by a degraded acoustic signal. Beyond the direct experimental manipulation contrasting speech produced with and without a mask, it might also be the case that continued exposure to altered speech cues, together with other COVID-related changes, might have affected the development of word segmentation abilities.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The pitch fall is due to the presence of a major prosodic boundary, which is signaled by the occurrence of a low edge tone (annotated as L% following labeling conventions within the intonational phonology framework; Frota et al, 2015 ). Regarding the acoustic differences between the with- and without-mask conditions, detailed analysis is given in Cruz et al's ( 2022 ). The main findings from this study indicate that mean intensity was significantly lower in the with-mask condition (67.7 dB) than in the without-mask condition (68.9 dB).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A detailed analysis of visual cues in the stimuli, namely, head and eyebrow movements, is given in Cruz et al's ( 2022 ). Head vertical movements were found to be larger in face-masked speech, whereas eyebrow movement was reduced.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some studies indicate that face masks degrade the acoustics of speech in different degrees, depending on the mask material (for a review, see Thibodeau et al, 2021 ). Such degradation can be mild ~2d B with a surgical mask and an FFP2 mask (Bottalico et al, 2020 ; Cruz et al, 2022 ) to more intense ~20 dB with transparent masks (Atcherson et al, 2020 ). Face masks, again depending on the material, affect other aspects of the acoustic signal, such as power distribution, spectral tilt, and timing, which are particularly affected by the FFP2 face mask (Rahne et al, 2021 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Early Word Segmentation Behind the Mask

et al. 2022

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Infants have been shown to rely both on auditory and visual cues when processing speech. We investigated the impact of COVID-related changes, in particular of face masks, in early word segmentation abilities. Following up on our previous study demonstrating that, by 4 months, infants already segmented targets presented auditorily at utterance-edge position, and, using the same visual familiarization paradigm, 7–9-month-old infants performed an auditory and an audiovisual word segmentation experiment in two conditions: without and with an FFP2 face mask. Analysis of acoustic and visual cues showed changes in face-masked speech affecting the amount, weight, and location of cues. Utterance-edge position displayed more salient cues than utterance-medial position, but the cues were attenuated in face-masked speech. Results revealed no evidence for segmentation, not even at edge position, regardless of mask condition and auditory or visual speech presentation. However, in the audiovisual experiment, infants attended more to the screen during the test trials when familiarized with without mask speech. Also, the infants attended more to the mouth and less to the eyes in without mask than with mask. In addition, evidence for an advantage of the utterance-edge position in emerging segmentation abilities was found. Thus, audiovisual information provided some support to developing word segmentation. We compared 7–9-monthers segmentation ability observed in the Butler and Frota pre-COVID study with the current auditory without mask data. Mean looking time for edge was significantly higher than unfamiliar in the pre-COVID study only. Measures of cognitive and language development obtained with the CSBS scales showed that the infants of the current study scored significantly lower than the same-age infants from the CSBS (pre-COVID) normative data. Our results suggest an overall effect of the pandemic on early segmentation abilities and language development, calling for longitudinal studies to determine how development proceeds.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 61%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Early Word Segmentation Behind the Mask

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Improving masked communication: the case for transparent masks

McCrackin,

Ristic

2024

Front. Commun.

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Clear and compassionate communication is tantamount to quality of care and patient wellbeing. Yet, much of communication in healthcare occurs with lower faces visually hidden behind opaque face masks. Visual occlusion of the face by masks impairs both verbal and nonverbal communication, including recognition of basic emotions, perceptions of trustworthiness, emotional understanding, and empathic responding. This piece presents a brief overview of the new COVID-19 inspired literature which shows that visual face occlusion creates significant communication barriers which can be reduced by wearing transparent instead of opaque masks.

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Auditory and visual cues in face-masked infant-directed speech

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Early Word Segmentation Behind the Mask

Early Word Segmentation Behind the Mask

Improving masked communication: the case for transparent masks

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