The COVID‐19 pandemic, mask‐wearing, and emotion recognition during late‐childhood

Abstract

Face masks are an effective and important tool to prevent the spread of COVID‐19, including among children. However, occluding parts of the face can impact emotion recognition, which is fundamental to effective social interactions. Social distancing, stress, and changes to routines because of the pandemic have also altered the social landscape of children, with implications for social development. To better understand how social input and context impact emotion recognition, the current study investigated emotion recognition in children (7–12 years old, N = 131) using images of both masked and unmasked emotional faces. We also assessed a subsample of participants (“pre‐pandemic subsample,” n = 35) who had completed the same emotion recognition task with unmasked faces before and during the pandemic. Masking of faces was related to worse emotion recognition, with more pronounced effects for happy, sad, and fearful faces than angry and neutral faces. Masking was more strongly related to emotion recognition among children whose families reported greater social disruption in response to the pandemic. Finally, in the pre‐pandemic subsample, emotion recognition of sad faces was lower during versus before the pandemic relative to other emotions. Together, findings show that occluding face parts and the broader social context (i.e., global pandemic) both impact emotion‐relevant judgments in school‐aged children.

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

“…Compared to adult participants, child participants demonstrated poor performance in emotion recognition from mask-worn faces in a variety of facial expressions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study with a sample of East Asian children to test the effects of mask-wearing on reading emotion from a face (Bourke et al, 2023; Carbon & Serrano, 2021; Chester et al, 2022; Cuzzocrea et al, 2023; Gil & Le Bigot, 2023; Giordano et al, 2022; Gori et al, 2021; Ruba & Pollak, 2020; Schneider et al, 2022, for Western children), including studies investigating emotion recognition from parts of the face (Gagnon et al, 2014; Guarnera et al, 2017, 2015; Roberson et al, 2012, for Western children). In addition to identifying the negative influence of wearing masks, we further demonstrated that this impairment in emotion recognition can be alleviated by using a transparent mask.…”

“…The negative side effects of wearing masks on reading emotions have been investigated in several studies since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (Pavlova & Sokolov, 2022). However, these findings rely heavily on empirical studies with adult participants, with the exception of nine studies (Bourke et al, 2023; Carbon & Serrano, 2021; Chester et al, 2022; Cuzzocrea et al, 2023; Gil & Le Bigot, 2023; Giordano et al, 2022; Gori et al, 2021; Ruba & Pollak, 2020; Schneider et al, 2022). It is questionable whether the results for adult participants can be generalized to school-aged children.…”

“…Post-2020, as mentioned above, nine studies have shown that face masks reduce children's emotion recognition performance. These studies have been conducted in the USA (Carbon & Serrano, 2021; Chester et al, 2022; Giordano et al, 2022; Ruba & Pollak, 2020) and Europe (Bourke et al, 2023; Cuzzocrea et al, 2023; Gil & Le Bigot, 2023; Gori et al, 2021; Schneider et al, 2022). The bias of the sample was also common in previous studies conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic (Gagnon et al, 2014; Guarnera et al, 2017, 2015; Roberson et al, 2012), in which emotion was recognized from parts of the face (e.g., trimmed eyes or mouth).…”

“…The performance on reading emotions was measured using emotion categorization and emotion intensity rating tasks for adult faces. Through analogy with a previous study conducted in the Western culture (Carbon, 2020; Carbon & Serrano, 2021; Chester et al, 2022), we predicted that the negative influence would differ between Japanese children and adult participants when examined for each facial expression. In addition, we examined whether the negative influence, if any, could be alleviated by using a transparent mask, as in a previous study with adult participants (Marini et al, 2021; Miyazaki et al, 2022).…”

Children’s knowledge and feelings align in response to emotional music.

“…Participants could not respond until the entire clip had played and could not repeat the clip. To test recognition, participants categorized a clip as "sad," "calm," or "scary" by selecting the emotion conveyed in the music using a validated and colored pictorial scale that reduced reliance on verbal/reading ability (Figure S1 in the online supplemental materials; Chester et al, 2023). The response options were on the screen while the participants listened to the clips to remove memory requirements in the task.…”