Challenging Times for Cochlear Implant Users – Effect of Face Masks on Audiovisual Speech Understanding during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Sönnichsen, Rasmus; Tó, Gerard Llorach; Hohmann, Volker; Hochmuth, Sabine; Radeloff, Andreas

doi:10.1177/23312165221134378

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 34 publications

(64 reference statements)

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“…The mask-wearing effect in older adults that we have isolated here could be due, at least in part, to age-related changes in hearing acuity. Hearing acuity tends to decline with age and masks pose a major communication barrier for individuals with hearing difficulties (Homans & Vroegop, 2021; Saunders et al, 2021; Sönnichsen et al, 2022; Tofanelli et al, 2022). Homans and Vroegop (2021) studied how masks affect speech intelligibility in adults with moderate to severe hearing loss ( N = 42).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mask wearing during neuropsychological assessment negatively impacts performance on verbal tests in older patients.

Thomas,

Tranel

2023

Psychological Assessment

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Face masks are recommended to minimize the spread of COVID-19 and are required in many health care settings. Although masks have documented health advantages, they also negatively impact communication, an essential element of clinical neuropsychological assessment. Using a large clinical data set from a major academic medical center, we investigated the effect of mask wearing on neuropsychological test performance. Specifically, we examined performance on eight standard, widely used neuropsychological tests between a prepandemic (unmasked) and postpandemic (masked) group, composed of 754 and 837 adult patients, respectively. We compared performance on verbally mediated versus visually mediated tests, hypothesizing that the postpandemic group, compared to the prepandemic group, would perform significantly lower on the verbally mediated tests but not on the visually mediated tests. In partial support of the hypothesis, we found that the postpandemic group performed significantly worse on the Auditory Verbal Learning Test (AVLT; p = .001). Secondary analyses showed that age moderated the mask-related effect ( p = .038), whereby patients 65 and older had significantly worse performance on Digit Span ( p = .0027) and the AVLT ( p = .0002) with masks on, while patients younger than 65 showed no significant differences. There were no significant differences on any visually mediated tests. These findings suggest that mask wearing during neuropsychological assessment compromises performance on verbally mediated tests in older patients. These findings are particularly relevant for neuropsychologists practicing in geriatric settings. Neuropsychologists performing assessments with masks should be aware that masks may artificially deflate patient scores for reasons unrelated to cognition or clinical condition. Public Significance StatementThis study shows that older individuals are at a disadvantage when completing verbal tasks with a mask on. It may be harder for older persons to hear clearly through masked speech, and this could interfere with their performance on mental status tests that rely on precise verbal exchange. Speaking clearly and at a higher volume could improve speech perception for this population.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mask wearing during neuropsychological assessment negatively impacts performance on verbal tests in older patients.

Thomas,

Tranel

2023

Psychological Assessment

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“…There are several literatures exploring communication difficulties and quality of life of individuals with HL and the benefit of hearing devices [ 16 , 17 , 24 , 25 ]. However, the comparison of performance between a basic and a premium hearing aid on speech performance has not been investigated yet.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparison of speech recognition performance with and without a face mask between a basic and a premium hearing aid in hearing-impaired listeners

Seol

Yun

et al. 2023

American Journal of Otolaryngology

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“…Here, the presented model utilizes a second order damage tensor and a finite strain formulation and is applied to purely mechanical problems. In future, the anisotropic damage modeling can be incorporated into multiphysical process simulations (e.g., [12,13]) and medical applications (e.g., [14]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An anisotropic damage model for finite strains with full and reduced regularization of the damage tensor

van der Velden,

Holthusen,

Brepols

et al. 2023

Proc Appl Math and Mech

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The modeling of damage as an anisotropic phenomenon enables the consideration of arbitrarily oriented microcracks at the material point level. Yet, the incorporation of material softening into structural simulations still requires a regularization of for example, the degrading variable. There exist different possibilities for a regularization in case of anisotropic damage with varying numbers of nonlocal degrees of freedom corresponding to for example, the symmetric integrity tensor , the principal traces of the damage tensor or a scalar damage hardening variable. Here, we propose a finite strain formulation with a symmetric second order damage tensor of which all six independent components are regularized with a corresponding nonlocal degree of freedom. Due to the significant increase in computational cost caused by the full regularization of the damage tensor, alternative approaches for a reduced regularization with fewer nonlocal degrees of freedom are discussed. Thereafter, the results of a numerical example using the model with full regularization are presented.

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Challenging Times for Cochlear Implant Users – Effect of Face Masks on Audiovisual Speech Understanding during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cited by 3 publications

References 34 publications

Mask wearing during neuropsychological assessment negatively impacts performance on verbal tests in older patients.

Mask wearing during neuropsychological assessment negatively impacts performance on verbal tests in older patients.

Comparison of speech recognition performance with and without a face mask between a basic and a premium hearing aid in hearing-impaired listeners

An anisotropic damage model for finite strains with full and reduced regularization of the damage tensor

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