Speech in masks: New papers out
Our lab has two papers now available that report on the effects of face masks on speech:
“The impact of face masks on spectral acoustics of speech: Effect of clear and loud speech styles” was just published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. We found that the low-pass filter effects of face masks are consistent across habitual, clear, & loud speech styles in young, healthy talkers, but effortful speech can help compensate for these acoustic effects.
“Acoustic and perceptual impact of face masks on speech: A scoping review” is now available as a preprint. We conducted a search in May 2021 examining evidence reporting on how face masks affect speech acoustics and/or perceptual consequences during spoken communication. We report on the various outcome measures reported, types of masks studied, and study populations included. Note that since the search was completed in May 2021, more research on the topic has been published, so this scoping review is a snapshot into the available literature.
Big shout out to Gursharan Badh for her work on these projects! These papers are the first two available in a series of our Speech-in-Masks studies (which we affectionately refer to as our SiM studies). Next week, I (Thea) will be presenting on the effects of face masks and effortful speech on speech acoustics in talkers with Parkinson’s disease. We have a couple of manuscripts in the works that explore perceptual consequences of these effects as well.
Stay tuned for more!
This work extends our findings on young healthy talkers which was published recently in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. As we found with the healthy talkers, masks attenuated higher frequency components of speech (as measured via spectral moments, spectral tilt, and mid-range frequencies measured from the long-term average spectra of read utterances). This attenuation effect was consistent across habitual, clear, and loud speech styles and across two speaker groups: older healthy adults and people with Parkinson’s disease. Speaking more clearly, followed by more loudly, resulted in relative amplification of these higher frequencies & compensating for the effects of the masks, and this was also the case for talkers with and without Parkinson’s. However, overall, talkers with Parkinson’s also had lower concentrations of higher frequency components of their speech to begin with. Previous literature suggests this pattern correlates with poorer perceived speech severity, intelligibility, and loudness in Parkinson’s. While speaking more clearly or loudly improved these spectral speech properties, masks limited the gains made by talkers with Parkinson’s because of their lower baseline. We discuss the results in the context of perceptual consequences and possible remediation strategies.
Selected References
Atcherson, S. R., McDowell, B. R., & Howard, M. P. (2021). Acoustic effects of non-transparent and transparent face coverings. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 149(4), 2249–2254. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0003962
Adams, S. G., & Dykstra, A. D. (2009). Hypokinetic dysarthria. In M. R. McNeil (Ed.), Clinical management of sensorimotor speech disorders. Thieme Publishing Group.
Corey, R. M., Jones, U., & Singer, A. C. (2020). Acoustic effects of medical, cloth, and transparent face masks on speech signals. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 148(4), 2371. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0002279
Cushnie-Sparrow, D. A. (2021). Modelling loudness: Acoustic and perceptual correlates in the context of hypophonia in Parkinson’s disease [Doctoral dissertation, Western University]. ProQuest Di
Goldin, A., Weinstein, B., & Shiman, N. (2020). How Do Medical Masks Degrade Speech Reception? Hearing Review, 27(5), 8–9.
Gutz, S., Rowe, H., & Green, J. (2021). Speaking with a KN95 Face Mask: ASR Performance and Speaker Compensation. Proceedings of Interspeech 2021, 4798–4802. https://doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2021-99
Knowles, T., & Badh, G. (2022). The impact of face masks on spectral acoustics of speech: Effectof clear and loud speech styles. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 11. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0011400
Maryn, Y., Wuyts, F. L., & Zarowski, A. (2021). Are Acoustic Markers of Voice and Speech Signals Affected by Nose-and-Mouth-Covering Respiratory Protective Masks? Journal of Voice, S0892199721000370. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2021.01.013
Smiljanic, R. (2021). Clear Speech Perception. In The Handbook of Speech Perception (pp. 177–205). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119184096.ch7
Ternström, S., Bohman, M., & Södersten, M. (2006). Loud speech over noise: Some spectral attributes, with gender differences. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119(3), 1648–1665. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2161435