Voice onset time and vowel formant measures in online testing and laboratory-based testing with(out) surgical face masks

Abstract

Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, conducting experiments online is increasingly common, and face masks are often used in everyday life. It remains unclear whether phonetic detail in speech production is captured adequately when speech is recorded in internet-based experiments or in experiments conducted with face masks. We tested 55 Spanish–Basque–English trilinguals in picture naming tasks in three conditions: online, laboratory-based with surgical face masks, and laboratory-based without face masks (control). We measured plosive voice onset time (VOT) in each language, the formants and duration of English vowels /iː/ and /ɪ/, and the Spanish/Basque vowel space. Across conditions, there were differences between English and Spanish/Basque VOT and in formants and duration between English /iː/–/ɪ/; between conditions, small differences emerged. Relative to the control condition, the Spanish/Basque vowel space was larger in online testing and smaller in the face mask condition. We conclude that testing online or with face masks is suitable for investigating phonetic detail in within-participant designs although the precise measurements may differ from those in traditional laboratory-based research.