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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 types of face masks in both age groups. Across noise levels, transparent face masks and cloth face masks with filters impaired performance the most, and surgical face masks had the smallest influence on intelligibility. Participants also rated speech produced with a face mask as more effortful than unmasked speech, particularly in background noise. Although young and older adults were similarly affected by face masks and noise in terms of intelligibility and subjective listening effort, older adults showed poorer intelligibility overall and rated the speech as more effortful to process relative to young adults. This research will help individuals make more informed decisions about which types of masks to wear in various communicative settings.

SUBMITTER: Brown VA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8286438 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:ObjectivesUnderstanding speech in real life can be challenging and effortful, such as in multiple-talker listening conditions. Fundamental frequency ( fo ) and vocal-tract length ( vtl ) voice cues can help listeners segregate between talkers, enhancing speech perception in adverse listening conditions. Previous research showed lower sensitivity to fo and vtl voice cues when speech signal was degraded, such as in cochlear implant hearing and vocoder-listening compared to normal hearing, likely contributing to difficulties in understanding speech in adverse listening. Nevertheless, when multiple talkers are present, familiarity with a talker's voice, via training or exposure, could provide a speech intelligibility benefit. In this study, the objective was to assess how an implicit short-term voice training could affect perceptual discrimination of voice cues ( fo+vtl ), measured in sensitivity and listening effort, with or without vocoder degradations.DesignVoice training was provided via listening to a recording of a book segment for approximately 30 min, and answering text-related questions, to ensure engagement. Just-noticeable differences (JNDs) for fo+vtl were measured with an odd-one-out task implemented as a 3-alternative forced-choice adaptive paradigm, while simultaneously collecting pupil data. The reference voice either belonged to the trained voice or an untrained voice. Effects of voice training (trained and untrained voice), vocoding (non-vocoded and vocoded), and item variability (fixed or variable consonant-vowel triplets presented across three items) on voice cue sensitivity ( fo+vtl JNDs) and listening effort (pupillometry measurements) were analyzed.ResultsResults showed that voice training did not have a significant effect on voice cue discrimination. As expected, fo+vtl JNDs were significantly larger for vocoded conditions than for non-vocoded conditions and with variable item presentations than fixed item presentations. Generalized additive mixed models analysis of pupil dilation over the time course of stimulus presentation showed that pupil dilation was significantly larger during fo+vtl discrimination while listening to untrained voices compared to trained voices, but only for vocoder-degraded speech. Peak pupil dilation was significantly larger for vocoded conditions compared to non-vocoded conditions and variable items increased the pupil baseline relative to fixed items, which could suggest a higher anticipated task difficulty.ConclusionsIn this study, even though short voice training did not lead to improved sensitivity to small fo+vtl voice cue differences at the discrimination threshold level, voice training still resulted in reduced listening effort for discrimination among vocoded voice cues.

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

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