Interactions with talkers wearing face masks have become part of our daily routine since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using an on-line experiment resembling a video conference, we examined the impact of face masks on speech comprehension. Typical-hearing listeners performed a speech-in-noise task while seeing talkers with visible lips, talkers wearing a surgical mask, or just the name of the talker displayed on screen. The target voice was masked by concurrent distracting talkers. We measured performance, confidence and listening effort scores, as well as meta-cognitive monitoring (the ability to adapt self-judgments to actual performance). Hiding the talkers behind a screen or concealing their lips via a face mask led to lower performance, lower confidence scores, and increased perceived effort. Moreover, meta-cognitive monitoring was worse when listening in these conditions compared with listening to an unmasked talker. These findings have implications on everyday communication for typical-hearing individuals and for hearing-impaired populations.

自 COVID-19 大流行开始以来，与戴口罩的谈话者互动已成为我们日常生活的一部分。使用类似于视频会议的在线实验，我们检查了口罩对语音理解的影响。典型听力的听众在看到说话者嘴唇可见、说话者戴着外科口罩或只是屏幕上显示说话者的名字时，执行了一项在噪声中讲话的任务。目标声音被同时分散注意力的谈话者掩盖。我们测量了表现、信心和听力努力分数，以及元认知监测（根据实际表现调整自我判断的能力）。将谈话者隐藏在屏幕后面或通过面罩隐藏他们的嘴唇会导致性能下降、信心得分降低和感知努力增加。而且，与不戴面具的谈话者相比，在这些条件下聆听时元认知监测更差。这些发现对听力正常的人和听力受损人群的日常交流有影响。