The flag that represents our world right now is the face mask. It has become embedded into our everyday lives and a required fashion accessory. It has become habitual to put on a face mask in order to protect ourselves and those around us from spreading the virus. Although the vaccine has started to be administered, face masks will still become a staple piece in our wardrobe for a while. This raises a question for parents wondering if face masks will become a barrier for children’s emotional learning. A lot of information that children gain are from facial expressions. Babies are able to look at their parents and see their reaction when interacting with an object or a person. If a child sees an adult be fearful of an animal, the child may pick up on the facial cues and gain information from it.
Although facial expression is a crucial part of improving emotional intelligence, there are other ways that children pay attention to gain information, such as body language and tone of voice. A recent study showed that 7-13 year old children were able to accurately determine the emotion of the adults who depicted a variety of emotional expressions while having their face be covered. Another study focused on seeing if adults and children were able to identify emotional expressions soly from their eyes, a task in which they called “reading the mind in the eyes”. Children from the age of 6-7 were highly capable of determining most emotions, like anger and sadness.
Children are very adaptable and flexible in their learning abilities. Researchers studied deaf children from Nicaragua who ended up developing their own sign language in order to communicate with each other. Children are able to find other ways to communicate and learn due to their young age and developing brain.
With all the worries that this pandemic has brought, we can take a deep breath and not stress about the toll it will take on a child’s emotional learning. Their flexibility in what and how they learn will allow them to gain a strong emotional understanding and pick up on social cues.
Gayoung (Jessica) Lee
Research Assistant, UCONN K.I.D.S.
Link to Article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-baby-scientist/202101/face-masks-and-children-s-emotion-understanding