Voice Differences When Wearing and Not Wearing a Surgical Mask

The purpose of our study was to investigate the impact of surgical mask on some vocal parameters such as F0, vocal intensity, jitter, shimmer and harmonics-to-noise ratio in order to understand how surgical mask can affect voice and verbal communication in adults.

The study was carried out on a selected group of 60 healthy subjects. All subjects were trained to voice a vocal sample of a sustained /a/, at a conversational voice intensity for the Maximum Phonation Time (MPT), wearing the surgical mask and then without wearing the surgical mask. Voice samples were recorded directly in Praat.

There were no statistically significant differences in any acoustic parameter between the masked and unmasked condition. There was a non-significant decrease in vocal intensity in 65% of the subjects while wearing a surgical mask.

The statistical comparison carried out between all the acoustic voice parameters observed, extracted wearing and not wearing a surgical mask did not reveal any significant statistical difference. Most of the subjects, after wearing the surgical mask, presented a decrease in vocal intensity measured. Our conclusion was that wearing a mask is likely to induce the unconscious need to increase the vocal effort, resulting over time in a greater risk of developing functional dysphonia. The reduction of intensity can affect also social interaction and speech audibility, especially for individuals with hearing loss.