The Role of Vocal Expressivity and Facial Cues in Aiding Comprehension

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, lecturers wore masks which covered facial cues. In two studies, we examined students' ability to comprehend both factually and inferentially presented information when the speaker's facial cues were or were not available and when delivered with or without expressive prosody. While comprehension was not affected by the availability of facial cues, participants expressed greater attentiveness and interest when facial cues were available compared to masked or audio-only presentations. Participants performed better on the quizzes when the lecture was delivered with expressiveness compared to nonexpressive delivery in both the between-subjects study (Study 1: Masked or Unmasked speaker) and in the within-subjects study (Study 2: Video or Audio-only presentation). Additionally, participants performed better on questions that interrogated their comprehension of factually delivered information as compared to those requiring them to infer from the passages. The importance of expressive prosody for listener comprehension is discussed.