Mask wearing in Japanese and French nursery schools: The perceived impact of masks on communication

Abstract

Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, covering the mouth region with a face mask became pervasive in many regions of the world, potentially impacting how people communicate with and around children. To explore the characteristics of this masked communication, we asked nursery school educators, who have been at the forefront of daily masked interaction with children, about their perception of daily communicative interactions while wearing a mask in an online survey. We collected data from French and Japanese nursery school educators to gain an understanding of commonalities and differences in communicative behavior with face masks given documented cultural differences in pre-pandemic mask wearing habits, face scanning patterns, and communicative behavior. Participants (177 French and 138 Japanese educators) reported a perceived change in their own communicative behavior while wearing a mask, with decreases in language quantity and increases in language quality and non-verbal cues. Comparable changes in their team members’ and children’s communicative behaviors were also reported. Moreover, our results suggest that these changes in educators’ communicative behaviors are linked to their attitudes toward mask wearing and their potential difficulty in communicating following its use. These findings shed light on the impact of pandemic-induced mask wearing on children’s daily communicative environment.

Exploring the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on pre-reading skills among Portuguese children

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Language acquisition in a post-pandemic context: the impact of measures against COVID-19 on early language development

“…In fact, previous findings have already shown that speakers tend to increase their speech quality (i.e., speech rate, pitch, length of words, etc.) while wearing a mask, in order to compensate for difficult communicative situations ( Crimon et al, 2022 ). Additionally, non-verbal cues such as co-speech gestures, beats or iconic gestures have also been said to compensate for speech degradation in a number of contexts ( Drijvers and Özyürek, 2017 ; Crimon et al, 2022 ).…”

“…while wearing a mask, in order to compensate for difficult communicative situations ( Crimon et al, 2022 ). Additionally, non-verbal cues such as co-speech gestures, beats or iconic gestures have also been said to compensate for speech degradation in a number of contexts ( Drijvers and Özyürek, 2017 ; Crimon et al, 2022 ). Therefore, it is possible that the use of alternative communication strategies might have neutralized the possible negative effects that masked speech might have produced otherwise.…”

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