Impact of Surgical Masks on Speech Recognition: A Study on Audio-Visual Communication

My area of expertise lies in audiology, with my MD project focusing on the effects of personal protective devices, such as surgical masks and face shields, on speech recognition. The emergence of COVID-19 has made communication more difficult for individuals, particularly those with hearing loss, due to the use of surgical masks that can attenuate sound transmission and block lip-reading. Through my research, I aimed to investigate the impact of masks on communication in the audio-visual modality. I presented subjects with different types of voices that were attenuated by various masks and videos with or without lip-reading. The results indicated that while masks can affect the clarity of sound, lip-reading still has a greater impact on communication.