Communication with face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic for adults with hearing loss

Poon, Brenda T.; Jenstad, Lorienne M.

doi:10.1186/s41235-022-00376-8

Cited by 28 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 25 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This is especially important when one considers the impact that face masks have had on those with hearing loss. In a recent study, over 80% of adults who were deaf or hard of hearing reported difficulty understanding others who wore face masks ( Poon and Jenstad, 2022 ). Therefore, it should be noted that these types of studies focusing on visual posed stimuli do so while negating the vocal modality.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Face Masks a Problem for Emotion Recognition? Not When the Whole Body Is Visible

Ross

George

2022

Front. Neurosci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The rise of the novel COVID-19 virus has made face masks commonplace items around the globe. Recent research found that face masks significantly impair emotion recognition on isolated faces. However, faces are rarely seen in isolation and the body is also a key cue for emotional portrayal. Here, therefore, we investigated the impact of face masks on emotion recognition when surveying the full body. Stimuli expressing anger, happiness, sadness, and fear were selected from the BEAST stimuli set. Masks were added to these images and participants were asked to recognize the emotion and give a confidence level for that decision for both the masked and unmasked stimuli. We found that, contrary to some work viewing faces in isolation, emotion recognition was generally not impaired by face masks when the whole body is present. We did, however, find that when viewing masked faces, only the recognition of happiness significantly decreased when the whole body was present. In contrast to actual performance, confidence levels were found to decline during the Mask condition across all emotional conditions. This research suggests that the impact of masks on emotion recognition may not be as pronounced as previously thought, as long as the whole body is also visible.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Face Masks a Problem for Emotion Recognition? Not When the Whole Body Is Visible

Ross

George

2022

Front. Neurosci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“… 2021 ). Hearing loss is another factor that can affect perception of masked speech, and listeners with hearing loss report greater difficulties perceiving masked speech in a variety of situations (Poon and Jenstad 2022 ; Saunders et al. 2021 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of experience on recognition of speech produced with a face mask

Crinnion

Toscano

2022

Cogn. Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Over the past two years, face masks have been a critical tool for preventing the spread of COVID-19. While previous studies have examined the effects of masks on speech recognition, much of this work was conducted early in the pandemic. Given that human listeners are able to adapt to a wide variety of novel contexts in speech perception, an open question concerns the extent to which listeners have adapted to masked speech during the pandemic. In order to evaluate this, we replicated Toscano and Toscano (PLOS ONE 16(2):e0246842, 2021), looking at the effects of several types of face masks on speech recognition in different levels of multi-talker babble noise. We also examined the effects of listeners’ self-reported frequency of encounters with masked speech and the effects of the implementation of public mask mandates on speech recognition. Overall, we found that listeners’ performance in the current experiment (with data collected in 2021) was similar to that of listeners in Toscano and Toscano (with data collected in 2020) and that performance did not differ based on mask experience. These findings suggest that listeners may have already adapted to masked speech by the time data were collected in 2020, are unable to adapt to masked speech, require additional context to be able to adapt, or that talkers also changed their productions over time. Implications for theories of perceptual learning in speech are discussed.

show abstract

“…Hearing-impaired listeners may have greater difficulty perceiving masked speech, because they are more susceptible than normal-hearing individuals to the sound attenuation caused by the mask and depend more strongly on lip reading during conversation. Recent surveys have shown that hearing-impaired listeners were significantly more affected by masked speech than those without hearing impairment ( Saunders et al, 2021 ; Poon and Jenstad, 2022 ). Two behavioral studies reported that the adverse effect of masks on speech perception is greater in hearing-impaired individuals than in normal-hearing individuals ( Thibodeau et al, 2021 ; Alkharabsheh et al, 2022 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of face masks on speech perception in noise of individuals with hearing aids

Choi

Kim

et al. 2022

Front. Neurosci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although several previous studies have confirmed that listeners find it difficult to perceive the speech of face-mask-wearing speakers, there has been little research into how masks affect hearing-impaired individuals using hearing aids. Therefore, the aim of this study was to compare the effects of masks on the speech perception in noise of hearing-impaired individuals and normal-hearing individuals. We also investigated the effect of masks on the gain conferred by hearing aids. The hearing-impaired group included 24 listeners (age: M = 69.5, SD = 8.6; M:F = 13:11) who had used hearing aids in everyday life for >1 month (M = 20.7, SD = 24.0) and the normal-hearing group included 26 listeners (age: M = 57.9, SD = 11.1; M:F = 13:13). Speech perception in noise was measured under no mask–auditory-only (no-mask–AO), no mask–auditory–visual (no-mask–AV), and mask–AV conditions at five signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs; −16, −12, −8, −4, 0 dB) using five lists of 25 monosyllabic Korean words. Video clips that included a female speaker’s face and sound or the sound only were presented through a monitor and a loudspeaker located 1 m in front of the listener in a sound-attenuating booth. The degree of deterioration in speech perception caused by the mask (no-mask–AV minus mask–AV) was significantly greater for hearing-impaired vs. normal-hearing participants only at 0 dB SNR (Bonferroni’s corrected p < 0.01). When the effects of a mask on speech perception, with and without hearing aids, were compared in the hearing-impaired group, the degree of deterioration in speech perception caused by the mask was significantly reduced by the hearing aids compared with that without hearing aids at 0 and −4 dB SNR (Bonferroni’s corrected p < 0.01). The improvement conferred by hearing aids (unaided speech perception score minus aided speech perception score) was significantly greater at 0 and −4 dB SNR than at −16 dB SNR in the mask–AV group (Bonferroni’s corrected p < 0.01). These results demonstrate that hearing aids still improve speech perception when the speaker is masked, and that hearing aids partly offset the effect of a mask at relatively low noise levels.

show abstract

Communication with face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic for adults with hearing loss

Cited by 28 publications

References 25 publications

Are Face Masks a Problem for Emotion Recognition? Not When the Whole Body Is Visible

Are Face Masks a Problem for Emotion Recognition? Not When the Whole Body Is Visible

Effects of experience on recognition of speech produced with a face mask

Effect of face masks on speech perception in noise of individuals with hearing aids

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About