Listening in 2020: A Survey of Adults' Experiences With Pandemic-Related Disruptions

Abstract

Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced lifestyle changes that may negatively impact communication, including the pervasive use of face masks and videoconferencing technology. Here, we examine the effects of age and self-rated hearing on subjective measures of speech understanding via a survey accessed by adults residing in the United States. Method Responses to an online survey were obtained from adults (21 years of age and older) during the summer and fall of 2020. The survey included questions about hearing and speech understanding in a variety of scenarios and different listening conditions, including when communicating with people using face masks in quiet and noisy environments and when using videoconferencing. Results Data from 1,703 surveys were analyzed. In general, the use of face masks led to the perception of poorer speech understanding and greater need for concentration, especially in noisy environments. When responses from all participants were considered, poorer self-rated communication ability was noted as age increased. However, among people who categorized their overall hearing as “Excellent” or “Good,” younger adults rated their speech understanding ability in noisy situations as poorer than middle-age or older adults. Among people who rated their overall hearing as “Fair” or “Poor,” middle-age adults indicated having more difficulty communicating with people using face masks, as compared with older adults. Examination of open-ended responses suggested that the strategies individuals use when communicating with people wearing face masks vary by age and self-rated hearing. Notably, middle-age and older adults were more likely to report using strategies that could put them at risk (e.g., asking others to remove their face masks). Conclusions Even younger adults with self-perceived good hearing are not immune to communication challenges brought about by face masks. Among individuals with similar degrees of self-rated hearing, the expected increase in communication difficulty with age was not noted among our respondents. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16528431

Effect of face masks on speech perception in noise of individuals with hearing aids

“…However, the effect of this age difference on the outcomes is presumed to be minimal. A previous large survey of 1,700 people showed that the age of the listener did not affect the degree of communication disturbance caused by masks (Helfer et al, 2021). Moreover, ANCOVA was used to control for the age difference between the two groups.…”

“…However, the widespread use of masks causes inconvenience in everyday conversation. Many previous studies have confirmed that mask-wearing interferes with communication not only in hearing-impaired individuals, but also in individuals with normal hearing (Atcherson et al, 2017;Chodosh et al, 2020;Helfer et al, 2021;Rahne et al, 2021;Thibodeau et al, 2021). Listeners recalled significantly fewer words when the sentences were spoken with a face mask, because when speech delivered with a face mask is processed, fewer cognitive resources are available for storing speech in memory (Truong and Weber, 2021).…”

“…Furthermore, the ability to perceive masked speech does not improve with increasing experience of listening to mask-wearers ( Crinnion et al, 2022 ). A large-scale survey reported that all respondents had trouble understanding masked speech, regardless of their age and hearing status, and that increased concentration was required to understand speech when communicating in noise with someone wearing a face mask ( Helfer et al, 2021 ). Hearing-impaired patients attending outpatient clinics complain of more discomfort in communicating with healthcare providers than they experienced before the pandemic.…”

Remote versus face-to-face neuropsychological testing for dementia research: a comparative study in people with Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia and healthy older individuals

“…31 An alternative (or complementary) explanation could again be age-related changes, here affecting hearing function (presbycusis). [32][33][34] The finding of significantly better performance on the verbal (letter) fluency task in the LPA cohort tested remotely compared with the cohort tested face-to-face is surprising. The obvious explanation is that the remote cohort was overall less impaired than the patients seen face-to-face; although efforts were made to match the two cohorts for disease severity and other potentially relevant factors.…”

Neuropsychological assessments for dementia research in the COVID-19 era: comparing remote and face-to-face testing

“…This is potentially consistent with the controls' preserved performance on the bisyllabic single word repetition test where top-down information can be used to complement bottom-up auditory information partially degraded by the videoconferencing software 49 . An alternative (or complementary) explanation could again be age-related changes, here affecting hearing function (presbycusis) [50][51][52] .…”