Pandemic Effect: Degradation of Speech Reception Due to Medical Masks

Pınarer Ö., Turhan S. N.

2020 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data), Georgia, Amerika Birleşik Devletleri, 10 - 13 Aralık 2020, ss.1-7

  • Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Tam Metin Bildiri
  • Doi Numarası: 10.1109/bigdata50022.2020.9377926
  • Basıldığı Şehir: Georgia
  • Basıldığı Ülke: Amerika Birleşik Devletleri
  • Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1-7
  • Galatasaray Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

Wearing a non-medical mask or face covering helps reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the community. The use of non-medical masks or face covers changes communication for everyone, but this presents an additional challenge for people with hearing loss or communication difficulties. People with hearing loss may have difficulty hearing in difficult situations, such as in noisy places or when they cannot trust lip reading cues or body expressions. face. In this study, a survey is implemented where speech recognition level-based questions are asked to the participants. Then, the same questions are asked again for the cases where medical masks are worn. In doing so, participants are also asked to explain the main difference between the pandemic period and the time before pandemic. Results show that wearing a medical mask has a concrete impact on speech recognition and causes a degrade on hearing level.