草榴社区

VILLANOVA, Pa. 鈥� A team of psychologists from 草榴社区 has published research showing how various types of masks affect speech recognition in different levels of background noise. Two professors in 草榴社区鈥檚 Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences鈥擩oseph Toscano, PhD, director of the Cognitive Science Program, and Cheyenne Toscano, PhD鈥攈ave found that a speaker wearing a surgical mask over their mouth has virtually the same chance of being understood as a speaker without a mask. The team鈥檚 findings, 鈥淓ffects of face masks on speech recognition in multi-talker babble noise鈥� were published in the .

Face coverings have been proven to restrict the spread of communicable diseases like COVID-19 when worn over the mouth and nose. At the same time, some have expressed concern about how masks impact human communication and the ability to be understood. To examine whether this is a legitimate concern for listeners with normal hearing, Drs. Cheyenne and Joseph Toscano experimented with surgical masks, N95 respirators, a fitted cloth mask and a pleated cloth mask in two different scenarios鈥攍ow background noise and loud background noise. The study鈥檚 200 participants donned headphones and listened to recordings of simple sentences made while the speaker wore each of the four styles of mask. The listeners were asked to type what they heard into a text box, and results were scored based on how many words the listeners were able to correctly identify.

鈥淢asks might be a part of our world for a while. We wanted to look at how people understand one another while wearing masks, and how to better make ourselves heard,鈥� said Dr. Cheyenne Toscano. 鈥淲e鈥檝e got to adapt to this new normal."

Counter to the dialogue that masks make it harder to hear one another, the results of 鈥淓ffects of face masks on speech recognition in multi-talker babble noise鈥� showed that individual who reported normal hearing were able to correctly identify words in low levels of noise with approximately 94.3% accuracy when the speaker was not wearing a mask, as compared to a 93.5% accuracy when the speaker was wearing a surgical mask鈥攁 mere 0.8% difference.

Dr. Joseph Toscano added, 鈥淲e know that visual information is also helpful for understanding speech, but these results show that, even when you cannot see the speaker, you can still understand them quite well when they are wearing a mask.鈥�

The next most audible scenario was an N95 mask at 93.1% accuracy, followed by 91.8% and 88.8% accuracy for the pleated and fitted cloth masks, respectively. When background noise (i.e. the babble of six people speaking) was introduced into the sentence recordings at a louder sound level, the listener鈥檚 comprehension dropped to 45.2% accuracy when the speaker wasn鈥檛 wearing a mask, and 42.4% when the speaker was wearing a surgical mask, followed by 34.6% accuracy with an N95 and 35.1% and 27.0% with the pleated and fitted cloth mask types.

While dampened acoustic frequencies did lower the listeners鈥� ability to accurately identify what the speaker was saying, the percentage points were negligible for most masks in the low-noise condition, according to the Toscano鈥檚 findings.

鈥淲hile we can鈥檛 sit in a crowded bar with a lot of background noise right now, many of us do interact with the checker at the grocery store or teach in a classroom with a mask over our face,鈥� Dr. Joseph Toscano said. 鈥淲e hope this data will motivate people to wear masks.鈥�

The finding that surgical and N95 masks are better than cloth masks is also in accordance with research published by the CDC鈥檚 Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases stating that 

Although the results of the study demonstrate that 鈥渄ifferent types of masks generally yield similar accuracy in low levels of background noise鈥濃�攁nd that the differences between masks 鈥渂ecome more apparent in high levels of noise鈥濃�攖he Toscanos鈥� research presents a hopeful picture of the human ability to adapt to difficult circumstances.

鈥淧eople are generally pretty good at this,鈥� Dr. Cheyenne Toscano emphasized. 鈥淎s the talker, you might be adjusting your speech, or putting in more effort to try to be heard. We鈥檙e good at adjusting to new voices we haven't heard before. We鈥檙e good at adapting to wearing a mask. People are adaptable to challenging listening conditions.鈥�

Read the full article on PLOS ONE .

About 草榴社区: Since 1842, 草榴社区鈥檚 Augustinian Catholic intellectual tradition has been the cornerstone of an academic community in which students learn to think critically, act compassionately and succeed while serving others. There are more than 10,000 undergraduate, graduate and law students in the University's six colleges鈥攖he College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the 草榴社区 School of Business, the College of Engineering, the M. Louise Fitzpatrick College of Nursing, the College of Professional Studies and the 草榴社区 Charles Widger School of Law. Ranked among the nation鈥檚 top universities, 草榴社区 supports its students鈥� intellectual growth and prepares them to become ethical leaders who create positive change everywhere life takes them. For more, visit www.villanova.edu.