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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article


CHILDREN’S EMOTION INFERENCES FROM MASKED FACES: IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL
INTERACTIONS DURING COVID-19

 * Ashley L. Ruba ,
   
   Roles Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing –
   review & editing
   
   * E-mail: ruba@wisc.edu
   
   Affiliation Department of Psychology and Waisman Center, University of
   Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
   
   https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6213-6868
   
   ⨯
 * Seth D. Pollak
   
   Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology,
   Project administration, Resources, Writing – review & editing
   
   Affiliation Department of Psychology and Waisman Center, University of
   Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America
   
   ⨯


CHILDREN’S EMOTION INFERENCES FROM MASKED FACES: IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL
INTERACTIONS DURING COVID-19

 * Ashley L. Ruba, 
 * Seth D. Pollak

x
 * Published: December 23, 2020
 * https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243708
 * 


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 * Abstract
 * Introduction
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ABSTRACT

To slow the progression of COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and
the World Health Organization (WHO) have recommended wearing face coverings.
However, very little is known about how occluding parts of the face might impact
the emotion inferences that children make during social interactions. The
current study recruited a racially diverse sample of school-aged (7- to
13-years) children from publicly funded after-school programs. Children made
inferences from facial configurations that were not covered, wearing sunglasses
to occlude the eyes, or wearing surgical masks to occlude the mouth. Children
were still able to make accurate inferences about emotions, even when parts of
the faces were covered. These data suggest that while there may be some
challenges for children incurred by others wearing masks, in combination with
other contextual cues, masks are unlikely to dramatically impair children’s
social interactions in their everyday lives.


FIGURES

  

Citation: Ruba AL, Pollak SD (2020) Children’s emotion inferences from masked
faces: Implications for social interactions during COVID-19. PLoS ONE 15(12):
e0243708. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243708

Editor: Zezhi Li, National Institutes of Health, UNITED STATES

Received: September 24, 2020; Accepted: November 29, 2020; Published: December
23, 2020

Copyright: © 2020 Ruba, Pollak. This is an open access article distributed under
the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: The raw data and analysis code are available from the Open
Science Framework (doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/7FYX9).

Funding: SDP was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (R01
MH61285) and a core grant to the Waisman Center from the National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development (U54 HD090256). ALR was supported by an
Emotion Research Training Grant (T32 MH018931) from the National Institute of
Mental Health. Funders did not play any role in study design, data collection
and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests
exist.


INTRODUCTION

COVID-19 is one of the worst pandemics in modern history. To slow the spread of
the virus, both the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health
Organization have recommended wearing face coverings in public spaces. This
recommendation has led to speculation and concern about the ramifications of
mask wearing on emotion communication [1, 2]. Of particular concern for parents
and teachers is how wearing masks might impact children’s social interactions
[3, 4]. While much research has documented how children infer emotions from
facial configurations and how this ability predicts children’s social and
academic competence [5–7], uncertain is how children make these inferences when
part of the face is occluded by a mask. The current study explores how children
draw emotional inferences from faces partially occluded by surgical masks and,
as a comparison, sunglasses.

Paper and cloth “surgical” masks cover the lower half of the face, allowing the
eyes, eyebrows, and forehead to remain visible. When asked to infer emotions
from stereotypical facial configurations, adults tend to look at the eyes first
and more frequently than other facial features (e.g., mouth, nose) [8–10],
although scan patterns vary across cultures [11, 12]. Adults also show
above-chance accuracy at inferring emotions from stereotypical facial
configurations when only the eyes are visible [13–15]. (Note: Across most
studies, “accuracy” refers to whether participants select the label/emotion
typically associated with a particular facial configuration, such as “anger” for
a face with furrowed brows and a tight mouth). Humans are particularly sensitive
to eyes [16], and thus, eye musculature may convey sufficient information for
adults to make reasonably accurate emotional inferences, even when masks cover
the mouth and nose.

Nevertheless, focusing on the eyes alone may be insufficient for some emotion
inferences [11, 17]. When facial configurations are ambiguous or subtle, adults
(and children) shift their attention between the eyes and other facial features
that may provide additional diagnostic information [18]. For instance, to make
inferences about whether wide eyes indicate “fear” or “surprise,” adults attend
to both the eyes and the mouth [19, 20]. Adults also tend to fixate on specific
facial features that characterize specific emotion stereotypes, such as the
mouth for happiness and the nose for disgust [8–10, 21]. Inferring emotions from
these characteristic facial features (e.g., labeling a smile as “happy”) is also
influenced by other parts of the face [10, 22–24]. In short, adults scan facial
configurations in a holistic manner [19, 25], allowing for information to be
gleaned from the mouth, nose, and other parts of the face, which are not
accessible when wearing a mask.

While this research suggests how adults infer emotions when parts of the face
are obscured, much less is known about how this process emerges in early
childhood [7]. In the first year of life, infants shift from configural to
holistic processing of faces [26, 27] and demonstrate heightened attention to
eyes associated with positive affective states [28–30]. By 3-years of age,
children show above-chance accuracy at inferring emotions from the eyes alone
[31]. However, compared to when other parts of the face are also visible, 5- to
10-year-olds are less accurate at inferring emotions from the eyes only [32–35],
although results for specific emotions have been inconsistent across studies
[32, 33]. One study even found that 3- to 4-year-olds were more accurate at
inferring happiness, sadness, and surprise from faces when the eyes were covered
by sunglasses [35]. With respect to emotion inferences with masks, only one
study has obscured the mouth (with a dark circle). Roberson et al. (2012) found
that 9- to 10-year-old children and adults showed more accurate emotion
inferences for uncovered faces than when the mouth was covered. However, 3- to
8-year-olds did not show these impairments. Similarly, when facial
configurations are presented within a background emotion context, 12-year-olds
show heightened visual attention to faces compared to 4- and 8-year-olds [18].
Thus, there may be developmental differences in children’s reliance on and use
of specific facial features to make emotional inferences and the impact of mask
wearing on these inferences.


CURRENT STUDY

The current study examines how 7- to 13-year-old children draw emotional
inferences from facial configurations that are partially occluded. This age
range was selected because there is a shift during this time in children’s use
of eye information to infer others’ emotions [33, 35]. Facial configurations
associated with different negative emotions (i.e., sadness, anger, fear) were
presented via a Random Image Structure Evolution (RISE) paradigm [36]. Facial
configurations were initially presented in a highly degraded format in which
children only had access to partial facial information. In a dynamic sequence,
the images became less degraded at regular intervals. After each interval,
children selected from an array of emotion labels to indicate their belief about
how the person displaying the facial configuration was feeling. Thus, this
paradigm allows for the assessment of children’s emotion inferences from
incomplete through more complete facial information. This approach is more
similar to daily experiences with the unfolding of others’ emotions compared to
a single presentation of a facial configuration at full intensity [37].

We examined how children perceived others’ emotions as partial information about
the face was presented, to evaluate whether masks meaningfully changed the types
of inferences children made. We included sunglasses as a comparison for other
types of coverings that children regularly encounter on faces in their daily
lives. Together, these results shed light on how mask wearing during COVID-19
might—or might not—influence children’s inferences about others’ emotions and
their related social interactions.


METHODS


PARTICIPANTS

Procedures were approved by the University of Wisconsin—Madison Institutional
Review Board. To test a racially diverse sample of children, participants were
recruited from publicly funded after-school programs associated with the Dane
County (Wisconsin) Department of Human Services. The final sample included 81 7-
to 13-year-old children (37 female, M = 9.86 years, SD = 1.84 years, range =
7.06–12.98 years). Parents identified their children as Black (53%, n = 43),
White (41%, n = 33), and Multi-racial (6%, n = 5). Three additional children
participated in the study but were excluded from final analyses due to missing
or corrupt data files. A power analysis confirmed that this sample size would be
sufficient to detect reliable differences in a within-subjects design, assuming
a medium effect size (f = .25) at the .05 level [36].


STIMULI

Stimuli, selected from the Matsumoto and Ekman (1988) database, were pictures of
stereotypical facial configurations associated with sadness, anger, and fear
posed by male and female models. These three emotions were selected given that
adults tend to fixate predominantly on the eyes for these facial configurations,
rather than other parts of the face (e.g., the mouth and nose, as with happiness
and disgust) [8, 20]. Further, negative emotions are complex and rich in
informational value [38]; yet, these emotions have received limited empirical
attention in the literature on emotion perception development [39–41]. Pictures
were presented in unaltered format (i.e., with no covering) or digitally altered
to be (a) covered with a surgical face mask that obscured the mouth and nose, or
(b) covered with sunglasses that obscured the eyes and eyebrows (see Fig 1).
Pictures of each emotion (sad, anger, fear) paired with each covering type
(none, mask, shades) were presented twice in a random order (i.e., 18 stimuli
total). Half of the presentations were on male faces and half were on female
faces.

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Fig 1. Example stimuli by covering.



From top to bottom: none, mask, shades. From left to right: sad, anger, fear.
The image is from a set of photographs entitled Japanese and Caucasian Facial
Expressions of Emotion (JACFEE) by D. Matsumoto and P. Ekman, University of
California, San Francisco, 1988. Copyright 1988 by D. Matsumoto and P. Ekman.
Reprinted by permission.



https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243708.g001


PROCEDURE

Parents provided written consent and children provided verbal assent prior to
participation. Children were tested in a modified Random Image Structure
Evolution (RISE) paradigm [36]. RISE performs pairwise exchanges of pixels in an
image until the target image dissolves into an unstructured random field. These
exchanges are presented in reverse order such that participants begin viewing a
random visual display that gradually transforms into a fully formed, clear image
(see Fig 2). Importantly, the RISE protocol holds the low-level perceptual
attributes of the original image (e.g., luminance, color) constant.

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Fig 2. Example test sequence.



Anger (no covering) is pictured. The image is from a set of photographs entitled
Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion (JACFEE) by D. Matsumoto
and P. Ekman, University of California, San Francisco, 1988. Copyright 1988 by
D. Matsumoto and P. Ekman. Reprinted by permission.



https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243708.g002

Children viewed these image sequences on a high-resolution touch-sensitive color
monitor. Faces were initially presented in a highly degraded format. At 14
regular 3.3-s intervals, the images became less degraded and easier to discern.
After each interval, children were prompted to identify the emotion depicted on
the face by selecting one of the following emotion labels: “happy,” “sad,”
“angry,” “surprised,” “afraid,” or “disgusted.” Labels were presented in this
order on the screen, and children touched a label to indicate their response. A
total of 252 responses were collected for each child (i.e., 14 trials each of 18
stimuli). Responses were coded as “accurate” if the child selected the
label/emotion typically associated with a particular facial configuration (i.e.,
“anger” for a face with furrowed brows).


RESULTS

All analyses were conducted in R [42], and figures were produced using the
package ggplot2 [43]. Alpha was set at p < .05. The raw data and analysis code
are available on OSF: doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/7FYX9. Children’s accuracy scores
were analyzed in a 3 (Emotion: sad / anger / fear) x 3 (Covering: none / mask /
shades) x 14 (Trial: 1 to 14) repeated-measures ANCOVA with child Gender as a
between-subjects factor and child Age as a covariate. All significant main
effects and interactions are explored below.


ARE CHILDREN MORE ACCURATE WITH ANGER, SADNESS, OR FEAR?

The main effect of Emotion, F(2, 154) = 30.46, p < .001, ηp2 = .28, showed that
children were more accurate with facial configurations associated with sadness
(M = .36, SD = .48) compared to anger (M = .27, SD = .44), t(80) = 4.10, p <
.001, d = .46, CI95%[.04, .13], or fear (M = .19, SD = .39), t(80) = 7.39, p <
.001, d = .82, CI95%[.12, .21]. Children were also more accurate with facial
configurations associated with anger compared to fear, t(80) = 3.68, p < .001, d
= .41, CI95%[.04, .12].

A similar pattern of results was seen in the Emotion x Trial interaction, F(14,
1091) = 5.35, p < .001, ηp2 = .06, which was explored with 95% confidence
intervals (estimated with bootstrapping, Fig 3). Unsurprisingly, children became
more accurate with each emotion as the images became less obscured. In earlier
trials, there were few differences between the stimuli. In later trials,
children were more accurate with facial configurations associated with sadness
compared to anger and fear, and children were more accurate with facial
configurations associated with anger compared to fear.

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Fig 3. Linear regression and means for emotion x trial and covering x trial
interactions.



The dotted line indicates chance responding (1/6). Confidence intervals (95%)
were estimated with bootstrapping (1,000 bootstrap estimates resampled 81 times
from mean participant accuracy).



https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243708.g003


ARE CHILDREN LESS ACCURATE WITH THE EYES OR MOUTH COVERED?

The primary question addressed by this study is whether masks meaningfully
degraded children’s ability to infer others’ emotions. The main effect of
Covering, F(2, 154) = 27.19 p < .001, ηp2 = .26, showed that children were more
accurate when faces were uncovered (M = .34, SD = .47) compared to when the
faces wore a mask (M = .24, SD = .43), t(80) = 6.57, p < .001, d = .73,
CI95%[.07, .13], or shades (M = .24, SD = .43), t(80) = 6.24, p < .001, d = .69,
CI95%[.07, .13]. Accuracy between the faces that wore masks and shades did not
differ, t(80) = .20, p > .25, d = .02, CI95%[-.03, .03]. A similar pattern of
results was seen in the Covering x Trial interaction, F(18, 1372) = 10.27, p <
.001, ηp2 = .12, which was also explored with 95% confidence intervals
(estimated with bootstrapping, Fig 3). Yet, the overall effect of face coverings
on accuracy was relatively small, especially as children gained more visual
information.


HOW DO DIFFERENT COVERINGS IMPACT CHILDREN’S INFERENCES FOR SPECIFIC EMOTIONS?

To explore the Emotion x Covering interaction, F(4, 284) = 3.58, p = .009, ηp2 =
.04, paired t-tests were conducted between each covering type, separated by
emotion (Fig 4). Further, to examine if children’s performance was greater than
chance (m = 1/6) for each emotion-covering pair, additional one-sample t-tests
were conducted. Bonferroni-holm corrections were applied for multiple
comparisons (reported p-values are corrected).

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Fig 4. Boxplots for the emotion x covering interaction.



* indicates comparisons between covering types for each emotion (*p < .05, ***p
< .001, +p < .10, NS = not significant with Bonferroni-Holm corrections). The
dotted line indicates chance responding (1/6). Δ indicates that accuracy was
significantly greater than chance (p < .05 with Bonferroni-Holm corrections).



https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243708.g004

For facial configurations associated with sadness, children were less accurate
when the faces wore masks (M = .28, SD = .45) compared to when the faces had no
covering (M = .43, SD = .49), t(80) = 4.60, p < .001, d = .51, CI95%[.08, .21].
Children’s accuracy did not differ when the faces wore shades (M = .37, SD =
.48) compared to when the faces had no covering, t(80) = 1.91, p = .12, d = .21,
CI95%[.00, .12], or wore masks t(80) = 2.47, p = .063, d = .27, CI95%[.02, .16].
Children responded with above-chance accuracy for all coverings: none, t(80) =
10.30, p < .001, d = 1.14, CI95%[.38, .47]; mask, t(80) = 4.77, p < .001, d =
.53, CI95%[.23, .33], shades, t(80) = 7.23, p < .001, d = .80, CI95%[.31, .42].

For facial configurations associated with anger, children were less accurate
when the faces wore masks (M = .27, SD = .44) compared to when the faces had no
covering (M = .34, SD = .48), t(80) = 2.72, p = .041, d = .30, CI95%[.02, .13].
Children were also less accurate when the faces wore shades (M = .20, SD = .40)
compared to when the faces had no covering, t(80) = 5.01, p < .001, d = .56,
CI95%[.09, .20]. Children’s accuracy when the faces wore masks or shades did not
differ, t(80) = 2.16, p = .10, d = .24, CI95%[.01, .13]. Children only responded
with above-chance accuracy when the faces had no covering, t(80) = 7.28, p <
.001, d = .81, CI95%[.30, .39], or when the faces wore masks, t(80) = 4.50, p <
.001, d = .50, CI95%[.22, .31]. Children did not respond with above-chance
accuracy when the faces wore shades, t(80) = 1.77, p = .24, d = .20, CI95%[.16,
.24].

For facial configurations associated with fear, children were less accurate when
the faces wore masks (M = .18, SD = .38) compared to when the faces had no
covering (M = .25, SD = .43), t(80) = 2.91, p = .028, d = .32, CI95%[.02, .12].
Children were also less accurate when the faces wore shades (M = .15, SD = .35)
compared to when the faces had no covering, t(80) = 3.96, p < .001, d = .44,
CI95%[.05, .16]. Children’s accuracy when the faces wore masks or shades did not
differ, t(80) = 1.09, p > .25, d = .12, CI95%[-.02, .09]. Children only
responded with above-chance accuracy when the faces had no covering, t(80) =
3.85, p < .001, d = .43, CI95%[.21, .30]. Children did not reach above-chance
accuracy when the faces wore masks, t(80) = .50, p > .25, d = .06, CI95%[.13,
.22], or shades, t(80) = .94, p > .25, d = .10, CI95%[.11, .19].

Thus, across all emotions, children were less accurate with faces that wore a
mask compared to faces that were not covered. However, children were only less
accurate with faces that wore sunglasses compared to uncovered for two emotions:
anger and fear. This suggests that children inferred whether the face displayed
sadness from mouth shape alone, whereas the information from the eye region was
necessary for forming inferences about anger and fear (see below). Ultimately,
accuracy differences between the masks and shades did not significantly differ
for any emotion. Thus, while both types of coverings negatively impacted
children’s emotion inferences, the strongest impairments were observed for
facial configurations associated with fear.

WHAT INFERENCES DID CHILDREN MAKE FOR EACH STIMULUS?

To further investigate why children did not reach above-chance responding for
the anger-shades, fear-mask, and fear-shades stimuli, we examined children’s
responses to each stimulus. As seen in Fig 5, children tended to interpret
facial configurations associated with fear as “surprised.” This effect was
particularly pronounced when the faces were covered by a mask. Children also
tended to interpret facial configurations associated with anger as “sad” when
the faces were covered by shades. In contrast, children interpreted facial
configurations associated with sadness as “sad,” regardless of covering.

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Fig 5. Average frequency of responses for each emotion and covering as a
function of trial.



The expected (“accurate”) response for each stimulus is outlined in white.



https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243708.g005


HOW DOES CHILDREN’S ACCURACY DIFFER BASED ON AGE?

The main effect of Age, F(1, 78) = 5.85, p = .018, ηp2 = .07, showed that
accuracy improved as child age increased. The Age x Trial, F(6, 474) = 2.40, p =
.027, ηp2 = .03, interaction was explored with a simple slopes analysis. This
analysis revealed that older children showed enhanced performance over the
course of the experiment compared to younger children (Fig 6).

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Fig 6. Simple slopes analysis for age x trial interaction.



The dotted line indicates chance responding (1/6).



https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243708.g006


HOW DOES CHILDREN’S ACCURACY DIFFER BASED ON GENDER?

Although there was not a significant main effect of Gender, F(1, 78) = .54, p >
.25, ηp2 = .01, a Gender x Emotion interaction emerged, F(2, 154) = 3.20, p =
.044, ηp2 = .04. Follow-up comparisons showed that male participants were
significantly more accurate with facial configurations associated with anger (M
= .30, SD = .46) compared to female participants (M = .24, SD = .42), t(79) =
2.28, p = .025, d = .51, CI95%[.01, .12]. Accuracy for facial configurations
associated with sadness, t(79) = 1.25, p = .22 d = .28, CI95%[-.03, .11], or
fear, t(79) = .53, p > .25, d = .12, CI95%[-.08, .05], did not differ based on
participant gender.


DISCUSSION

These results highlight how children’s social interactions may be minimally
impacted by mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Positive social
interactions are predicated on the ability to accurately infer and respond to
others’ emotions. In the current study, children’s emotion inferences about
faces that wore masks compared to when faces were not covered were still above
chance. Masks seem to have the greatest effect on children’s inferences about
facial configurations associated with “fear,” which were commonly identified as
“surprised” when the mouth and nose were covered. Thus, although children may
require more visual facial information to infer emotions with masks, children
may reasonably infer whether someone wearing a mask is sad or angry, based on
the eye region alone. In addition, children’s accuracy with masked facial
configurations did not significantly differ from their accuracy with facial
configurations that wore sunglasses—a common accessory that children encounter
in their everyday lives. Thus, it appears that masks do not negatively impact
children’s emotional inferences to a greater degree than sunglasses. In sum,
children’s ability to infer and respond to another person’s emotion, and their
resulting social interactions, may not be dramatically impaired by mask wearing
during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Furthermore, in everyday life, it is unlikely that children draw emotional
inferences from facial configurations alone. For instance, the same facial
configuration may be inferred as either “anger” or “disgust” depending on
background context, body posture, and facial coloration [18, 44, 45]. In
addition, dynamic facial configurations and faces that are vocalizing are
scanned differently than silent, static pictures of faces [46–48]. Ultimately,
facial configurations displayed in everyday life are more dependent on context,
less consistent, and less specific than pictures of stereotyped emotions
commonly used in laboratory tasks [37]. The current paradigm improves upon these
standard laboratory tasks by assessing children’s emotion inferences from
incomplete facial information. However, the key to children’s emotional
inferences is the ability to learn about and navigate the tremendous variability
inherent in human emotion [7, 49]. In everyday life, children may be able to use
additional contextual cues to make reasonably accurate inferences about others’
variable emotional cues, even if others are wearing masks.

Future research should take these considerations into account when designing and
interpreting findings on mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the
current study assessed whether children made “accurate” emotion inferences, a
single facial configuration can be interpreted in many ways that are “accurate”
given a particular context [37]. Researchers could explore how children make
emotion inferences from a wider variety of non-stereotyped emotional cues that
are presented in context. Although we did not find many age effects in the
current study, future research could also explore how younger children’s social
interactions are impacted by mask wearing, particularly infants who are actively
learning about others’ emotions [50]. To conclude, while there may be some loss
of emotional information due to mask wearing, children can still infer emotions
from faces, and likely use many other cues to make these inferences. This
suggests that children, and adults, may be able to adapt to the new reality of
mask wearing to have successful interactions during this unprecedented health
crisis.


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