Effects of Wearing Face Masks While Using Different Speaking Styles in Noise on Speech Intelligibility During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in the recommended/required use of face masks public. a mask compromises communication, especially presence competing noise. It is crucial to measure potential effects wearing on speech intelligibility noisy environments where excessive background noise can create communication challenges. transparent and using clear facilitate better verbal were evaluated this study. We listener word identification scores following four conditions: (1) type condition (i.e., no mask, disposable mask), (2) presentation mode auditory only audiovisual), (3) speaking style conversational speech), (4) with two types shaped four-talker babble at −5 signal-to-noise ratio). Results indicate that noise, listeners performed less well when speaker wore or compared mask. Listeners correctly identified more words audiovisual listening speech. combination negatively impact for listeners. Transparent ability understand target sentences by providing visual information. Use was shown alleviate challenging situations including compensating lack cues reduced acoustic signals.