The impact of face masks on face-to-face neural tracking of speech: Auditory and visual obstacles.

ABSTRACT: Face masks provide fundamental protection against the transmission of respiratory viruses but hamper communication. We estimated auditory and visual obstacles generated by face masks on communication by measuring the neural tracking of speech. To this end, we recorded the EEG while participants were exposed to naturalistic audio-visual speech, embedded in 5-talker noise, in three contexts: (i) no-mask (audio-visual information was fully available), (ii) virtual mask (occluded lips, but intact audio), and (iii) real mask (occluded lips and degraded audio). Neural tracking of lip movements and of the sound envelope of speech was measured through backward modeling, that is, by reconstructing stimulus properties from neural activity. Behaviorally, face masks increased perceived listening diffi

SUBMITTER: Fantoni M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11328033 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature