overview: Babies aged 6-9 months can form memories of faces in masks and recognize them when the masks are removed.
sauce: University of California, Davis
Babies learn by looking at human faces, so many parents and childhood experts are concerned about possible developmental disabilities from the widespread use of face masks during the pandemic.
A new study by researchers at the University of California, Davis found that 6- to 9-month-old babies form memories of masked faces and can recognize those faces when the mask is removed.
Michaela DeBolt, PhD candidate in cognitive psychology, and Lisa Oakes, professor in the Department of Psychology and Center for Mind and Brain, used eye tracking to study how masks affect facial recognition in young children. Researched.
In this study, the computer screens of 58 babies sitting on their parents’ laps or in high chairs displayed paired faces of a woman with a mask and a woman without a mask, and a camera tracked where they were looking. Recorded. Because babies stay longer in unfamiliar images, the researchers were able to work out which faces they recognized, DeBolt said.
Findings are published in a paper published in the journal’s January/February special issue early childhoodfocused on the impact of COVID-19 on infant development.
Testing will run from late December 2021 to late March 2022 at the Oakes’ Infant Cognition Lab at the Center for Mind and Brain in Davis, California, during statewide mask mandates and the arrival of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. was performed on
“Babies learned the masked face and recognized it when they saw the unmasked face again,” said DeBolt.
However, when the order was reversed, babies did not strongly perceive the masked face they first saw unmasked. DeBolt said this was similar to her own experience of not immediately recognizing her friends wearing masks on her face.
Learning faces is important for babies learning to speak, perceive emotions, form relationships with caregivers, and explore their environment, Oakes said. “So people were very concerned about face masks and their effect on the way infants learn about human faces.”
Oakes, an expert in infant cognitive development, said the study highlights the amazing adaptive capacity of babies. “I think it should be very reassuring for parents in general,” she said.
“There are so many variations in a baby’s routine,” she added. “As long as they are well cared for, fed, and given love and attention, they thrive. And that’s clearly not the case.”
About this neurodevelopmental research news
author: Kathleen Holder
sauce: University of California, Davis
contact: Kathleen Holder – UC Davis
image: image is public domain
Original research: closed access.
“Effects of face masks on infant face learning: an eye-tracking studyby Michaela C. DeBolt et al. early childhood
See also
overview
Effects of face masks on infant face learning: an eye-tracking study
This pre-enrolled study examined how face masks affected facial memory in a sample of infants aged 6 to 9 months (N. = 58) Born during the COVID-19 pandemic. Infant memory was tested using a standard visual pair comparison (VPC) task.
We crossed proficiency and whether the face was masked during testing, and divided into 4 trial types (masked proficiency/masked test, unmasked proficiency/masked test, masked proficiency/masked test). no test, and unmasked proficiency/unmasked-test).
Infants showed memory for faces when their faces were unmasked on the test, regardless of whether their faces were masked during familiarization. However, infants showed no robust evidence of memory when the test face was masked, regardless of their mastery status.
Furthermore, although this difference was not related to memory performance, infants’ bias toward looking at the upper (eye) region was greater for masked faces than for unmasked faces.
In summary, the presence of a face mask appears to affect facial processing and memory in infants, but they can form memories of masked faces and recognize familiar faces even when the mask is removed.
