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

Martin Serrano,Claus-Christian Carbon

doi:10.1177/20416695211038265

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.

Highlights

Wearing face masks has become a usual practice in acute infection events inducing the problem of misinterpreting the emotions of others
Carbon (2020) was the first to substantiate the everyday problems in recognizing facial emotions people reported during the first wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic, back in May 2020: the recognition performance of emotional reading decreased, but the participants confused several emotions, especially disgust, happiness, and anger
Children were more accurate in inferring others’ emotion when faces were unmasked—this showed up with a large effect size, Cohen’s d 1⁄4 0.73. The authors summarized their findings that children “may not be dramatically impaired by mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic” (Ruba & Pollak, 2020, p. 9), by focusing on the above-chance level performances and due to the fact that the participants were not less handicapped in reading emotions when face masks covered others’ faces than when covered by sunglasses

Summary

Introduction

Wearing face masks has become a usual practice in acute infection events inducing the problem of misinterpreting the emotions of others. Kids showed extreme problems in reading the emotion disgust, strong effects on fear and sadness, and only mild effects on happiness, and even better performances for emotional states anger and neutral when faces were masked. This project did gain relevant data about children’s perception and 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. S. aimed at submitting such a replication study to the school’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fair in 2020 (which he won—and, he subsequently won the second prize in the district STEM fair in 2020 with this project)

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