Communication Impacts of Face Masks in Hearing Contexts

Face masks have become ubiquitous in public and clinical settings, yet they impose significant barriers on spoken communication. By attenuating high-frequency components of speech, masks reduce the acoustic clarity of consonants and raise the threshold for speech detection in noisy or reverberant environments. The concealment of lip movements and facial expressions further deprives listeners of visual cues essential for lip reading and emotion recognition. These combined effects increase listening effort, slow conversational turn-taking and can exacerbate social isolation, particularly for individuals with hearing loss or in settings requiring precise verbal exchange such as healthcare and education. Practical adaptations—transparent masks, clear speech, assistive listening devices and environmental modifications—have been proposed to mitigate these challenges and preserve communicative accessibility on a global scale.

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Communication Impacts of Face Masks in Hearing Contexts publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in communication impacts of face masks in hearing contexts across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR): The level difference between a target speech signal and background noise, often expressed in decibels, which determines the ease of speech perception.

Speech intelligibility: The extent to which spoken words are correctly recognised by a listener, influenced by acoustic clarity and availability of visual cues.

Lip reading: The process of interpreting speech by visually observing the speaker’s lip movements and facial expressions to supplement degraded auditory information.

Listening effort: The cognitive resources required to understand speech under challenging conditions, rising when acoustic signals are weak or distorted.

References

1. The impact of COVID-19 on communicative accessibility and well-being in adults with hearing impairment: a survey study. BMC Public Health (2023).
2. Patient and Health Care Worker Perceptions of Communication and Ability to Identify Emotion When Wearing Standard and Transparent Masks. JAMA Network Open (2021).
3. Effects of face masks on speech recognition in multi-talker babble noise. PLOS ONE (2021).
4. Face mask use in healthcare settings: effects on communication, cognition, listening effort and strategies for amelioration. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications (2022).