Respirator and cloth masks make it harder to understand speech when there is background noise, though surgical masks don't hinder communication.
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Article Title: Effects of face masks on speech recognition in multi-talker babble noise
Funding: This material is based on upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1945069 awarded to JCT. This work received funding from Villanova University's Falvey Memorial Library Scholarship Open Access Reserve (SOAR) Fund awarded to JCT and CMT. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Article URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0246842
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