The Impact of Face Masks on the Emotional Reading Abilities of Children—A Lesson From a Joint School–University Project

Abstract

Wearing face masks has become a usual practice in acute infection events inducing the problem of misinterpreting the emotions of others. Empirical evidence about face masks mainly relies on adult data, neglecting, for example, school kids who firmly are dependent on effective nonverbal communication. Here we offer insights from a joint school–university project. Data indicate that emotional reading of 9 to 10 years old pupils ( N = 57) was similarly impaired as adults on an overall performance level, but that their selective performance on specific emotions was quite different. Kids showed extreme problems in reading the emotion disgust, strong effects on fear and sadness, and only mild effects on happiness, but also even better performances for emotional states anger and neutral when faces were masked. This project did gain not only relevant data about children’s perception but also made clear how fruitful seriously conducted school projects can be to encourage the interest and commitment for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)-relevant topics.

Impact of face masks and sunglasses on emotion recognition in South Koreans

“…This study sheds light on the effects of wearing a mask, that is, the effects of occlusion of the mouth area on the recognition of different emotions in everyday contexts. These findings were also replicated with children age 9–10 years [ 15 ].…”

“…Another group that requires special attention is children. In recent studies, researchers have found that children’s emotion recognition is also affected by facial masks [ 15 , 16 , 47 ]. Given that childhood is an important developmental stage for the socialization of emotion [ 48 , 49 ] and a potential influence of mask wearing on the development of necessary social interaction skills [ 18 ], it would be important not only to understand the effect of facial occlusion among children but also to develop strategies to help young children learn to read emotions from others.…”

“…Some recent studies that empirically confirmed the impact of facial masks, thereby increasing the realism during the COVID-19 outbreak, were noticeable [ 9 , 15 – 17 ]. As reviewed by Pavlova & Sokolov [ 18 ], recent studies that examined the effects of mask-wearing showed that mask hurts emotion recognition and that the impairment in recognition varied by specific emotions.…”

Face Masks Do Not Alter Gaze Cueing of Attention: Evidence From the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The present data indicate that the attentional response to a nonverbal spatial cue conveyed by gaze direction can be observed irrespective of face mask, and hence suggest that this micro-level component of social interaction is preserved. Interestingly, a recent study (Carbon & Serrano, 2021; see also Ruba & Pollak, 2020) has reported that children are not strongly affected by face masks in emotional reading. This, in turn, provides further evidence for the notion that face masks do not necessarily impair face processing mechanisms.…”

Understanding the Impact of Face Masks on the Processing of Facial Identity, Emotion, Age, and Gender

“…Given the considerable importance of intact face processing in social interaction, it is important to understand how face masks affect face recognition. A great deal of studies have been dedicated recently to understanding the impact of face masks on various aspects of social interaction and cognition (Carbon, 2020 ; Carragher and Hancock, 2020 ; Freud et al, 2020 ; Green et al, 2020 ; Spitzer, 2020 ; Carbon and Serrano, 2021 ; Gori et al, 2021 ; Grundmann et al, 2021 ; Kastendieck et al, 2021 ; Marler and Ditton, 2021 ; Molnar-Szakacs et al, 2021 ; Noyes et al, 2021 ; Stajduhar et al, 2021 ). Many of these studies have demonstrated the detrimental effects of masks on the recognition of facial emotion and identity.…”