Influence of Audio Speech Rate and Source Text Difficulty on Health Information Comprehension and Retention

Area of Science:

• Health Communication
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Health literacy is essential for informed healthcare decisions.
• Audio information, via smart speakers, is increasingly used for health dissemination.
• Understanding factors affecting audio health information comprehension is vital.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of audio speech rate and source text difficulty on health information comprehension and retention.
• To assess how these variables affect perceived difficulty.

Main Methods:

• Audio snippets were created from easy and difficult source texts.
• A study was conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT).
• Independent variables: audio speech rate, source text difficulty. Dependent variables: perceived difficulty, comprehension, retention.

Main Results:

• Audio from difficult texts was perceived as more difficult and led to lower comprehension.
• A 60% faster speech rate reduced health information comprehension by 38% compared to a moderate rate.
• Higher speech rates negatively impacted information retention.

Conclusions:

• Source text difficulty and audio speech rate significantly affect health information comprehension and retention.
• Optimizing audio content for clarity and moderate speech rates is crucial for effective health communication.
• Findings have implications for designing accessible audio health information for diverse populations.