Communicating More Clearly With a Mask On

Using face masks can reduce the spread of disease, but it can also affect the way we communicate by means of facial expression and hearing the speaker's voice. Recognizing this may be important for a speaker to be understood.

Nonverbal Communication May Be Challenging

People usually communicate face to face verbally, with words, but also nonverbally, by facial expression — for example by smiling when greeting a friend. As masks hide much of the face, expressing yourself by eyes and forehead might become more important.

Okazaki and associates (2021) recorded muscle activity surrounding the eyes in people with and without masks when they were asked to smile, speak, and read aloud. The authors recorded the electrical signals of muscle activity via sensors on the skin over those muscle groups to provide an electromyogram (EMG). They reported that the signal from the orbicularis oculi, the muscle that closes the eyelids and may affect the forehead, temple, and cheek, was significantly greater in the mask compared to the no-mask condition, suggesting that the participants were spontaneously compensating for the mask wearing by increasing their expressions around the eyes.

Eye Contact Might Also Become More Important

In a social situation, eye contact with another person can show that you are paying attention in a friendly way. Biological factors behind eye contact include its stimulation by the hormone oxytocin, associated with attention and attachment, and particular brain regions that respond to it. As I reported previously (Lavine, 2016),

neuroscientist Bonnie Auyeung from the University of Cambridge found that the hormone oxytocin increased the amount of eye contact from men toward the interviewer during a brief interview when the direction of their gaze was recorded. This was also found in high-functioning men with some autistic spectrum symptoms, who may tend to avoid eye contact. Specific brain regions that respond during direct gaze are being explored by other researchers, using advanced methods of brain scanning.

Hearing a Speaker’s Words Can Also Be a Problem

If you have had trouble understanding some speakers who were wearing masks, you are not alone. According to Sarah Sydlowski, audiologist at the Cleveland Clinic (2020), masks can affect voice clarity because they

…essentially muffle your voice volume-wise and they cause a reduction in high pitch sounds, like consonants that start and end words and give them their meaning. This actually mimics one of the most common types of hearing loss and gives everyone these days the experience of what it’s like to live with hearing loss. So all of us are feeling a little frustrated.

How to communicate more clearly?

Dr. Sydlowski says louder is not usually better with a mask, but you do want to raise the volume of your voice just a little bit to get past the barrier. She adds that it’s actually more helpful to speak very slowly and clearly and to really enunciate the beginnings and ends of words because masks muffle everything:

When somebody doesn’t hear us, our natural tendency is just to say the same thing again, maybe louder. Sometimes, it’s actually better to clarify by rephrasing what you said. For the listener who is struggling, instead of just saying ‘What?’ help the speaker understand which part you missed. This way they can clarify the part that was missed more effectively — which is very helpful. We’ve lost a lot of visual information with masks because we can’t see each other’s lips. Looking at someone while you’re talking lets them know that you really have their attention — which is extra important.

I would add that good speakers often pause between phrases rather than speaking on and on without a break.

Dr. Sydlowski continued that a large part of communicating clearly with a mask on, especially to people who may have some amount of hearing loss, which often affects high-pitched sounds,

… is just recognizing there is a challenge that’s happening, it’s real, it’s affecting all of us and that we all need to be a little more cognizant of just slowing down and speaking clearly, especially when extra distance is involved.