Bourke, Lorna and Lingwood, Jamie and Gallagher-Mitchell, Thomas and Lopez-Perez, Belen (2023) The effect of face mask wearing on language processing and emotion recognition in young children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 226 (105580). ISSN 0022-0965
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Abstract
Face mask wearing was an important preventative strategy for the transmission of the COVID-19 virus. However, the effects that occluding the mouth and nose area with surgical masks could have on young children’s language processing and emotion recognition skills have received little investigation. To evaluate the possible effects, the current study recruited a sample of 74 children from the North West of England (aged 4–8 years). They completed two computer-based tasks with adults wearing or not wearing surgical face masks to assess (a) language processing skills and (b) emotion recognition ability. To control for individual differences, age, sex, receptive vocabulary, early reading skills, and parent-reported social–emotional competence were included in analyses. The findings from the study highlighted that although younger children were less accurate than older children, face masks did not significantly impair basic language processing ability. However, they had a significant effect on the children’s emotion recognition accuracy—with masked angry faces more easily recognized and masked happy and sad faces less easily recognized. Children’s age and social-emotional skills also played a role. The findings suggest that the effects of face masks should continue to be evaluated.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information and Comments: | © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. Available under a Creative Commons CC-BY License. |
| Keywords: | Face mask, Emotion, Language processing, Children |
| Faculty / Department: | Faculty of Human and Digital Sciences > School of Psychology |
| Depositing User: | Lorna Bourke |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Nov 2022 14:45 |
| Last Modified: | 08 Nov 2022 14:46 |
| URI: | https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/3677 |
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