The Role of Face Masks in the Recognition of Emotions by Preschool Children

How experience shapes infants' communicative behaviour: Comparing gaze following in infants with and without pandemic experience

“…Our findings do not provide support for the assumption that the pandemic‐related changes in social life have led to changes in infants' gaze following and gaze behavior toward the eyes and mouth, neither for the better nor for the worse. This is in line with existing studies on other social and emotional competencies (e.g., emotion recognition; Calbi et al., 2021; Schneider et al., 2021). There are different reasons why this might be the case.…”

“…For instance, the effects of facial masks might become more pronounced as infants grow older and are confronted with more situations in which facial masks are obligatory, or with more complex emotions. However, data on preschoolers' emotion recognition indicate that they are able to recognize at least different basic emotions, even when the person is wearing a mask (Schneider et al., 2021). This suggests that even at an older age, and when a mask is worn in the situation under investigation, children successfully demonstrate social and emotional competencies.…”

“…Parents and caregivers likewise expressed their concerns about the potential long‐term effects of the current situation. However, even though first studies have explored the influence of the COVID‐19 pandemic on social development (e.g., Calbi et al., 2021; Schneider et al., 2021), still too little is known to warrant firm conclusions and evidence‐based recommendations for parents, caregivers, and policymakers, in particular regarding the vulnerable phase of infancy. With this study, we aimed to expand the knowledge about overall pandemic effects on infants' ability to read social‐communicative signals from an interaction partner's gaze direction.…”

Pädiatrie aktuell – Forschung kurz notiert

“…Es bestehen dabei aber auch Befürchtungen, dass Emotionen und insbesondere Empathie dadurch nicht ausreichend vermittelt werden können. Eine Schweizer Studie [ 3 ] hat nun untersucht, inwiefern Vorschulkinder die Emotionen Erwachsener „hinter Masken“ erkennen bzw. richtig zuordnen können.…”

Mapping the perception-space of facial expressions in the era of face masks

“…The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and the introduction of face masks as a protective device to limit the spread of the infection has raised considerable interest in the context of studies on face processing, as masks made it impossible to view the entire lower half of the face. Several studies conducted after the beginning of the pandemic (and the use of face masks) have investigated potential patterns in the recognition of emotions by comparing conditions in which the faces were entirely visible with conditions in which the faces were covered by a mask ( Carbon, 2020 ; Grundmann et al, 2020 ; Ruba and Pollak, 2020 ; Bani et al, 2021 ; Calbi et al, 2021 ; Carbon and Serrano, 2021 ; Fitousi et al, 2021 ; Gori et al, 2021 ; Grahlow et al, 2021 ; Kang et al, 2021 ; Lau, 2021 ; Marini et al, 2021 ; Noyes et al, 2021 ; Pazhoohi et al, 2021 ; Sheldon et al, 2021 ; Ziccardi et al, 2021 ; Carbon et al, 2022 ; Grenville and Dwyer, 2022 ; Kastendieck et al, 2022 ; Kim et al, 2022 ; Langbehn et al, 2022 ; Maiorana et al, 2022 ; McCrackin et al, 2022 ; Parada-Fernández et al, 2022 ; Schneider et al, 2022 ; Tsantani et al, 2022 ). Previous studies had also investigated the ability to extract affective meaning from only partially visible faces, using different occlusion methods such as the following: presenting stimuli covered by hats, scarves, sunglasses, niqabs, or censoring black bars; degrading the quality of sections of the presented image; or progressively increasing the visual information available ( Kret and de Gelder, 2012 ; Calvo and Fernández-Martín, 2013 ; Calvo et al, 2014 ; Wegrzyn et al, 2017 ; Kret and Fischer, 2018 ; Liedtke et al, 2018 ; Ruba and Pollak, 2020 ; Kret et al, 2021 ; Noyes et al, 2021 ; Kim et al, 2022 ).…”