Surgical face masks do not impair the decoding of facial expressions of negative affect more severely in older than in younger adults
Abstract Surgical face masks reduce the spread of airborne pathogens but also disturb the flow of information between individuals. The risk of getting seriously ill after infection with SARS-COV-2 during the present COVID-19 pandemic amplifies with age, suggesting that face masks should be worn espe...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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SpringerOpen
2022-07-01
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| Series: | Cognitive Research |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-022-00403-8 |
| _version_ | 1828267488287129600 |
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| author | Lea Henke Maja Guseva Katja Wagemans Doris Pischedda John-Dylan Haynes Georg Jahn Silke Anders |
| author_facet | Lea Henke Maja Guseva Katja Wagemans Doris Pischedda John-Dylan Haynes Georg Jahn Silke Anders |
| author_sort | Lea Henke |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract Surgical face masks reduce the spread of airborne pathogens but also disturb the flow of information between individuals. The risk of getting seriously ill after infection with SARS-COV-2 during the present COVID-19 pandemic amplifies with age, suggesting that face masks should be worn especially during face-to-face contact with and between older people. However, the ability to accurately perceive and understand communication signals decreases with age, and it is currently unknown whether face masks impair facial communication more severely in older people. We compared the impact of surgical face masks on dynamic facial emotion recognition in younger (18–30 years) and older (65–85 years) adults (N = 96) in an online study. Participants watched short video clips of young women who facially expressed anger, fear, contempt or sadness. Faces of half of the women were covered by a digitally added surgical face mask. As expected, emotion recognition accuracy declined with age, and face masks reduced emotion recognition accuracy in both younger and older participants. Unexpectedly, the effect of face masks did not differ between age groups. Further analyses showed that masks also reduced the participants’ overall confidence in their emotion judgements, but not their performance awareness (the difference between their confidence ratings for correct and incorrect responses). Again, there were no mask-by-age interactions. Finally, data obtained with a newly developed questionnaire (attitudes towards face masks, atom) suggest that younger and older people do not differ in how much they feel impaired in their understanding of other people’s emotions by face masks or how useful they find face masks in confining the COVID-19 pandemic. In sum, these findings do not provide evidence that the impact of face masks on the decoding of facial signals is disproportionally larger in older people. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-13T05:05:07Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-1b510ab184ef43028ba464ad62751b5f |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2365-7464 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-13T05:05:07Z |
| publishDate | 2022-07-01 |
| publisher | SpringerOpen |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Cognitive Research |
| spelling | doaj.art-1b510ab184ef43028ba464ad62751b5f2022-12-22T03:01:11ZengSpringerOpenCognitive Research2365-74642022-07-017111510.1186/s41235-022-00403-8Surgical face masks do not impair the decoding of facial expressions of negative affect more severely in older than in younger adultsLea Henke0Maja Guseva1Katja Wagemans2Doris Pischedda3John-Dylan Haynes4Georg Jahn5Silke Anders6Department of Psychology, Universität zu LübeckBernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu BerlinDepartment of Neurology, Universität zu LübeckBernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu BerlinBernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu BerlinDepartment of Psychology, Chemnitz University of TechnologyDepartment of Neurology, Universität zu LübeckAbstract Surgical face masks reduce the spread of airborne pathogens but also disturb the flow of information between individuals. The risk of getting seriously ill after infection with SARS-COV-2 during the present COVID-19 pandemic amplifies with age, suggesting that face masks should be worn especially during face-to-face contact with and between older people. However, the ability to accurately perceive and understand communication signals decreases with age, and it is currently unknown whether face masks impair facial communication more severely in older people. We compared the impact of surgical face masks on dynamic facial emotion recognition in younger (18–30 years) and older (65–85 years) adults (N = 96) in an online study. Participants watched short video clips of young women who facially expressed anger, fear, contempt or sadness. Faces of half of the women were covered by a digitally added surgical face mask. As expected, emotion recognition accuracy declined with age, and face masks reduced emotion recognition accuracy in both younger and older participants. Unexpectedly, the effect of face masks did not differ between age groups. Further analyses showed that masks also reduced the participants’ overall confidence in their emotion judgements, but not their performance awareness (the difference between their confidence ratings for correct and incorrect responses). Again, there were no mask-by-age interactions. Finally, data obtained with a newly developed questionnaire (attitudes towards face masks, atom) suggest that younger and older people do not differ in how much they feel impaired in their understanding of other people’s emotions by face masks or how useful they find face masks in confining the COVID-19 pandemic. In sum, these findings do not provide evidence that the impact of face masks on the decoding of facial signals is disproportionally larger in older people.https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-022-00403-8Online studyFacial emotion recognitionFace maskAngerFearContempt |
| spellingShingle | Lea Henke Maja Guseva Katja Wagemans Doris Pischedda John-Dylan Haynes Georg Jahn Silke Anders Surgical face masks do not impair the decoding of facial expressions of negative affect more severely in older than in younger adults Cognitive Research Online study Facial emotion recognition Face mask Anger Fear Contempt |
| title | Surgical face masks do not impair the decoding of facial expressions of negative affect more severely in older than in younger adults |
| title_full | Surgical face masks do not impair the decoding of facial expressions of negative affect more severely in older than in younger adults |
| title_fullStr | Surgical face masks do not impair the decoding of facial expressions of negative affect more severely in older than in younger adults |
| title_full_unstemmed | Surgical face masks do not impair the decoding of facial expressions of negative affect more severely in older than in younger adults |
| title_short | Surgical face masks do not impair the decoding of facial expressions of negative affect more severely in older than in younger adults |
| title_sort | surgical face masks do not impair the decoding of facial expressions of negative affect more severely in older than in younger adults |
| topic | Online study Facial emotion recognition Face mask Anger Fear Contempt |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-022-00403-8 |
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