Children can correctly recognize the emotions of adults with almost the same frequency as adults without masks.

A new study shows that concerns that masks prevent young children from learning to detect and recognize facial expressions and emotions associated with them—a key social and communication skill—may be unfounded. A recently published study showed that preschoolers are not significantly hindered in correctly identifying the emotions on the faces of adults wearing masks.

As Covid-19 cases begin to surge in 2020, countries around the world have promulgated new health and safety protocols, such as social distancing and widespread use of masks, to limit the spread of the virus. But over time, it became clear that Covid-19 would not disappear anytime soon, and people began to question whether masks would hinder the development of young children. Specifically, some people want to know whether the universal mask policy will hinder or delay children's emotional development or communication skills.

However, a recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics shows that masks are not a major obstacle for children to recognize the emotions of others. In this study, researchers at the University Hospital of Lausanne in Switzerland used 15 different adult actors to create a set of 90 different photos. Every actor is asked to use facial expressions to express joy, anger, and sadness. In a set of photos, the actor is wearing a surgical mask. In the other group, they did not.

These photos were then randomly shown to 276 children between the ages of 3 and 6, and they were asked to name the emotions they showed or emojis pointing to the emotions they showed. Children can also choose to answer "I don't know" or "I want to quit the experiment."

When viewing photos of actors without masks, the children were able to correctly recognize the emotions expressed 70.6% of the time. When viewing photos of actors wearing masks, children's ability to correctly perceive emotions from facial expressions only slightly decreased, down to 66.9%.

The study pointed out: "In general, the participants in this study have been exposed to masks for nearly a year, and their ability to recognize emotions in pictures is better than previous research reports, even when they wear masks." "Boys and There is no difference between girls. The rate of correct responses increases with age."

It seems that what makes some children stumble is the confusion of anger and sadness. According to researchers, an analysis of the wrong answers for preschoolers not wearing masks found that about 25% of them confuse these two emotions, while 21% are happy with angry or sad answers, which leads to Positive biases of children.

Although this study is not perfect-other researchers have pointed out that when showing children still pictures depicting emotions, they will miss the additional visual or verbal background cues gained in real-world interactions-but it does provide some assurance , Dr. Dimitri Christakis, editor of JAMA Pediatrics, pointed out in his editor's note. Christakis wrote: "Considering the small size of the impact (especially when compared to the overall rate of correct responses), these results provide ample assurance that masks are unlikely to inhibit children's ability to understand emotions."