Effects of wearing an opaque or transparent face mask on the perception of facial expressions: A comparative study between Japanese school-aged children and adults

Abstract

The negative side effects of mask-wearing on reading facial emotional cues have been investigated in several studies with adults post-2020. However, little is known about children. This study aimed to determine the negative influence of mask-wearing on reading emotions of adult faces by Japanese school-aged children, compared to Japanese adults. We also examined whether this negative influence could be alleviated by using a transparent face mask instead of an opaque one (surgical mask). The performance on reading emotions was measured using emotion categorization and emotion intensity rating tasks for adult faces. As per the findings, the accuracy of emotion recognition in children was impaired for various facial expressions (disgust, fear, happy, neutral, sad, and surprise faces), except for angry faces. Conversely, in adults, it was impaired for a few facial expressions. The perceived intensity for happy faces with a surgical mask was weaker in both children and adults than in those without the mask. A negative influence of wearing surgical masks was generally not observed for faces wearing a transparent mask in both children and adults. Thus, negative side effects of mask-wearing on reading emotions are observed for more facial expressions in children than in adults; transparent masks can help remedy these.

Children's experiences of mask‐wearing: a systemic review and narrative synthesis

“…The literature has been variable, with some studies implying a significant impact on children and others implying a negligible effect. 27,28,30,34,37,39,50,53,55,56,60,64 Interestingly, while Ruba et al 53 found that children were slightly more accurate in inferring emotions when faces were uncovered, compared with when reviewing pictures of faces with masks, there was no difference in their accuracy between faces with sunglasses and masks. Therefore, it is essential to understand the impact of these effects, rather than solely establishing an effect.…”

“…A similar approach could be used in establishing the effects of masks on children's ability to read others‘ facial expressions and process speech. The literature has been variable, with some studies implying a significant impact on children and others implying a negligible effect 27,28,30,34,37,39,50,53,55,56,60,64 . Interestingly, while Ruba et al 53 found that children were slightly more accurate in inferring emotions when faces were uncovered, compared with when reviewing pictures of faces with masks, there was no difference in their accuracy between faces with sunglasses and masks.…”

Emotional reactions evoked by masks with an implied mouth

“…We employed jsPsych (de Leeuw, 2015) and Cognition (https://www.cognition.run/) for stimulus control and data collection. In line with previous studies addressing surgical masks (e.g., Carragher & Hancock, 2020;Dudarev et al, 2022;Grundmann et al, 2021;Kamatani et al, 2021Kamatani et al, , 2023Miyazaki et al, 2022Miyazaki et al, , 2023Miyazaki & Kawahara, 2016;Noyes et al, 2021), we used photographic images as stimuli. Ten AI-generated human faces (five males and five females) were selected from https://www.photo-ac.com/main/genface.…”