This is because knowing the conversation context helps us to understand language quickly and effortlessly. For example, in the sentence “For your birthday I baked this cake”, the words “birthday” and “baked” are related in meaning to the last word “cake” and often occur together. Our brains can use this information to predict what a speaker is going to say.
Our study shows that giving this type of contextual information reduces the difficulties in understanding masked speech. When given high contextual information, both children and adults process masked speech only 1% less accurately than normal speech. This explains why communicating with masks causes difficulties in some situations but not others.
While there have been fears that masks would affect children’s learning, in the classroom teachers use many techniques that increase contextual information. They design lessons in a way that builds upon students’ existing knowledge and use images, keywords and written text. All of these techniques support children’s understanding of what is being said and help them to compensate for face mask effects.
Listeners also use other clues that reduce mask effects. For example, most masks do not cover the upper part of the face. This is good news because seeing the speaker’s eyes and upper face helps us to understand masked speech better. As a result, our comprehension of language is remarkably robust.
However, participants in our study did not have any hearing or speech difficulties, and only listened to an adult speaker in quiet conditions. We don’t know how mask wearing has affected children’s communication with their peers, or its impact on other aspects of their learning and wellbeing.
PhD Candidate in Linguistics, University of Cambridge
The article was first published at The Conversation.
Source: The Print
