Face mask type affects audiovisual speech intelligibility and subjective listening effort in young and older adults.

ABSTRACT: Identifying speech requires that listeners make rapid use of fine-grained acoustic cues-a process that is facilitated by being able to see the talker's face. Face masks present a challenge to this process because they can both alter acoustic information and conceal the talker's mouth. Here, we investigated the degree to which different types of face masks and noise levels affect speech intelligibility and subjective listening effort for young (N = 180) and older (N = 180) adult listeners. We found that in quiet, mask type had little influence on speech intelligibility relative to speech produced without a mask for both young and older adults. However, with the addition of moderate (- 5 dB SNR) and high (- 9 dB SNR) levels of background noise, intelligibility dropped substantially for all t

SUBMITTER: Brown VA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8286438 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature