Study: Facial Hair Creates Less Intelligible Speech
Tuesday, April 27th, 2010
Study gave test subjects fake mustaches and wicked amish beards to see how much visual speech recognition was affected.
Investigating the interference of facial hair with visual speech intelligibility poses the problem of accurately controlling the amount and shape of facial hair across several speakers while keeping the recording situation constant. Since it is difficult to find participants willing to grow and then cut their beards as needed, we decided to use artificial beards made from natural hair. Two different types were chosen: mustache and long chin beard.
This explains why understanding hockey players en route the Stanley Cup because more and more of a chore