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Speakers exhibit a multimodal Lombard effect in noise
James Trujillo1,2, Asli Özyürek3,4,5, Judith Holler3,4
1Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. James.Trujillo@mpi.nl.
Scientific Reports
|August 19, 2021
Summary
Adapting to noise in face-to-face communication involves more than just speaking louder. This study reveals that human gestures also change, demonstrating a multimodal response to auditory challenges.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Science
- Linguistics
- Human Communication
Background:
- Communicating in noisy environments is common.
- The Lombard effect describes increased speech intensity and mouth movements in noise.
- Adaptation to noise in face-to-face interaction, including gestures, is not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how noise affects multimodal communication in face-to-face interactions.
- To determine if the Lombard effect extends beyond speech to include manual gestures.
Main Methods:
- Dutch adults communicated action verbs while wearing headphones with varying levels of background noise.
- Quantitative motion capture and acoustic analyses were employed.
- Speech intensity, gesture kinematics, and mouth movements were measured.
Main Results:
- Noise exposure led to increased speech intensity and enhanced gesture kinematics and mouth movements.
- Acoustic modulation (changes in speech) occurred only when gestures were absent.
- Kinematic modulation (changes in gestures) occurred regardless of speech modulation.
Conclusions:
- The Lombard effect in face-to-face communication is a multimodal phenomenon.
- The visual channel (gestures) plays a significant role in adapting to noise.
- Communication adaptation in noise involves both auditory and visual modalities.
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