The Effect of Face Masks on the Acoustic Properties of Vowels

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

    Abstract

    The use of face masks has become necessary in everyday life due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Although they can protect individuals from infectious droplets, they may develop communication obstacles. The present study investigates the effect of face mask wearing on the speech properties of vowels. Ten speakers were asked to produce at a normal speaking rate their native vowels in two conditions: with and without a cotton face mask. The vowels were embedded in carrier phrases in a /pVs/ context. Their productions were sent to speech production software and the statistical analyses were performed through linear mixed-effects models in R. The results showed that the first formant, which corresponds to tongue height, and duration of all vowels did not differ in the two conditions, while there was a significant alteration of the second formant, which corresponds to tongue position, for two out of five vowels. It is suggested that the second formant might be less robust to signal alteration deriving from face mask wearing, while speech signal alteration might be sound-specific. So, speech signal might be modified to some extent for some speech sounds, creating communication problems. The results can provide significant implications for second/foreign language instructors and health care providers such as doctors and speech therapists. Also, they can inform a broader community of social sciences and humanities scientists.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationCOVID-19 and a World of Ad Hoc Geographies
    Subtitle of host publicationVolume 1
    PublisherSpringer International Publishing
    Pages2381-2391
    Number of pages11
    Volume1
    ISBN (Electronic)9783030943509
    ISBN (Print)9783030943493
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2022

    Keywords

    • COVID-19
    • Face masks
    • Speech production
    • Vowels

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