Masking Emotions: Face masks impair how we read emotions
frontiersin.org
frontiersin.org
IMO masks are severely harming social and interpersonal development of young children, but any suggestion of removing the masks creates shit storm of controversy. The solution seems to be online learning, but it’s worth noting that a major group pushing for masks in school (teachers) are the same pushing online teaching. IMO That’s a disingenuous conflict of interest, but since pediatricians are also pushing masks for children in school, what’s the solution here? Maybe the solution is to create little plastic enclosed boxes so no child gets within 3 feet or 4 feet of another child. Everyone is surrounded by plastic like they are Hannibal Lecter, but at least they can see the smile on each other’s face…
You can take the masks off when you are at home with your own kids.
Our kids still see other people's faces all the time. They see our faces, they see other kid's faces during meals / snacks, they see adult faces from a slight distance when we're outside.
That's because serious illnesses which are easily transmitted can severely harm social and interpersonal development.
Yes, kids do mostly OK with covid, but their parents and other close contacts may not. If wearing masks brings the risk level down enough to have school in person, that's probably better than online school without masks.
If it doesn't matter, don't worry about it--and if it does matter, just ask! You don't need to be able to guess someone's emotions from their face for society to function.
This has not been my experience – I suspect I've always relied on body language at least as much as facial cues, and that other people wearing masks doesn't deprive me of as much information as it does for many others.
I wonder how much of that will stick around out of habit when we are eventually done with masks.
I think my daughter was glad she was wearing a mask at that moment. Probably she'll have to wear that mask to school for most of the school year. I'd hate to be a teacher trying to figure out what my kids were actually thinking.
I see absolutely no reason to believe that, and plenty of reason to think it's total bunk. E.g., blind children exist, and they are not psychologically damaged by not being able to read faces.
All that it claims is that it may impact their social skills. They hypothesize that masks may cause social development delays, and they measure that masks make it harder to judge emotions, but they do not actually tie that hypothesis to their research, and they have no justification that the hypothesized changes to social skills would actually be problematic--which is not at all given, since what counts as "good social skills" is heavily dependent on culture.
To conclude, here, we showed that mask use influences our ability to infer facial expressions at any age.
Furthermore, we showed that the human capacity to read emotions from facial configurations when a face mask is present becomes particularly reduced in toddlers. We suggested that this is related to different age-related developmental stages of face processing associated with emotional reasoning.
Such observation poses the question whether a privation of facial visual features, as the one we are experiencing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, might alter or delay the development of social skills associated with face perception in early childhood.
Designing devices for personal protection that allows visibility of the lower part of the face may be crucial in all environments important for developing social and interaction skills in children, such as in education or rehabilitation, especially for those suffering from sensory or cognitive deficits.
Knowledge from the current study can inform emotion-centered interventions and prevention programs that aim to foster socio-emotional processes linked to emotional understanding (Izard et al., 2008).
So, that's what it actually says. It very clearly does not say that kids will be psychologically damaged by not being able to see the lower halves of other people's faces in public, and it does not make any attempt to account for social learning in the home.
I'm not a psychologist ask one.
>blind children exist, and they are not psychologically damaged by not being able to read faces.
They never saw one that's why, they were born blind but those who became blind later on suffer greatly.
The way that neurotypical Americans currently use facial expressions for public social interaction isn't set in stone, inherent to humanity, or essential to normal development. It is a collection of accidental cultural practices, which are not shared throughout the world right now and will change in the future anyway. So, something might be speeding up the evolution of our cultural conventions right now--so what?
The kids will be fine.
The OP didn't even say they were American
the choice isn't between current facial expressive norms and different ones, it's limiting the ability of children to read the most expressive part of our faces entirely.
They will take more harm from missing faces because their psychological development depends on reading face emotions. Covid death rate among children is extremely low but they can spread it to their parents are grandparents tho.
After this pandemic is all gone and done why don't we all wear Guy Fawkes masks for the rest of the life if faces don't matter as you imply. Maybe that way we can preserve our privacy and fight CCTV surveillance.
After this pandemic is all gone and done why don't we all wear Guy Fawkes masks for the rest of the life if faces don't matter as you imply. Maybe that way we can preserve our privacy and fight CCTV surveillance.
Yeah. Let's do it. I am 100% down for that. If I want you to recognize me, I'll wear a name tag, and if I want you to know how I'm feeling I'll tell you.
I was alluding to opposite; let's be faceless and emotionless if face and emotion don't matter.
Or that they only learn how to emote and facial expressions from their limited interactions outside their home?
Wear a mask. The kids will be fine.