To assess how different styles of face masks affected speech intelligibility in normal hearing listeners, researchers from Washington University in St. Louis put some of the most popular mask designs to the test.
Their research was published in the journal Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications.
The team, from the labs of Kristin Van Engen, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences and of linguistics in Arts & Sciences, and Jonathan E. Peelle, associate professor of otolaryngology at the School of Medicine, found that cotton masks with filter inserts and masks with a transparent plastic panel were linked to/associated with the worst performance when it came to understanding what the wearer was saying.
Read more of the original article from MedicalXpress
