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Face perception is considered a remarkable visual ability in humans that is subject to a prolonged developmental trajectory. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, mask-wearing has become mandatory for adults and children alike. Recent research shows that mask-wearing hinders face recognition abilities in adults, but it is unknown if the same holds true in school-age children in whom face perception is not fully developed. Here we tested children ( n  = 72, ages 6–14 years old) on the Cambridge Face Memory Test – Kids (CFMT-K), a validated measure of face perception performance. Faces were presented with or without masks and across two orientations (upright/inverted). The inclusion of face masks led to a profound deficit in face perception abilities. This decrement was more pronounced in children compared to adults, but only when task difficulty was adjusted across the two age groups. Additionally, children exhibited reliable correlations between age and the CFMT-K score for upright faces for both the mask and no-mask conditions. Finally, as previously observed in adults, children also showed qualitative differences in the processing of masked versus non-masked faces. Specifically, holistic processing, a hallmark of face perception, was disrupted for masked faces as suggested by a reduced face-inversion effect. Together, these findings provide evidence for substantial quantitative and qualitative alterations in the processing of masked faces in school-age children.

The sanitary-mask effect (Miyazaki and Kawahara in Jpn Psychol Res 58(3):261–272, 2016) is the finding that medical face masks prompt an image of disease and thus result in lower ratings of facial attractiveness of the wearer. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, medical masks have been found to increase attractiveness (Patel et al. in Plast Reconstruct Surg Glob Open 8(8), 2020) although this could have been a general effect of occlusion. To further explore this issue, female participants were presented with a series of male faces of low or high attractiveness that were occluded with a medical mask, cloth mask, book or not occluded and asked to rate them on attractiveness. The results show that faces were considered as most attractive when covered by medical masks and significantly more attractive when occluded with cloth masks than when not occluded. Contrary to expectation, base attractiveness did not interact with the type of occlusion, suggesting that this is not simply due to occlusion of negative features. The present findings are contrary to the sanitary-mask effect and explanations in terms of social desirability, and the association of medical masks with caregiving professions is explored.

Face masks are now worn frequently to reduce the spreading of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Their health benefits are undisputable, but covering the lower half of one's face also makes it harder for others to recognize facial expressions of emotions. Three experiments were conducted to determine how strongly the recognition of different facial expressions is impaired by masks, and which emotions are confused with each other. In each experiment, participants had to recognize facial expressions of happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, fear, and disgust, as well as a neutral expression, displayed by male and female actors of the Radboud Faces Database. On half of the 168 trials, the lower part of the face was covered by a face mask. In all experiments, facial emotion recognition (FER) was about 20% worse for masked faces than for unmasked ones (68% correct vs. 88%). The impairment was largest for disgust, followed by fear, surprise, sadness, and happiness. It was not significant for anger and the neutral expression. As predicted, participants frequently confused emotions that share activation of the visible muscles in the upper half of the face. In addition, they displayed response biases in these confusions: They frequently misinterpreted disgust as anger, fear as surprise, and sadness as neutral, whereas the opposite confusions were less frequent. We conclude that face masks do indeed cause a marked impairment of FER and that a person perceived as angry, surprised, or neutral may actually be disgusted, fearful, or sad, respectively. This may lead to misunderstandings, confusions, and inadequate reactions by the perceivers. Highlights We studied how facial masks impair facial emotion recognition. We used validated actors and facial expressions from the Radboud Faces Database. Masks impaired recognition of disgust, fear, surprise, sadness, and happiness. With masks, disgust was often misinterpreted as anger, and fear as surprise. These results were replicated twice in large samples.

Face masks have become common protective measures in community and workplace environments to help reduce the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Face masks can make it difficult to hear and understand speech, particularly for people with hearing loss. An aim of our cross-sectional survey was to investigate the extent that face masks as a health and safety protective measure against SARS-CoV-2 have affected understanding speech in the day-to-day lives of adults with deafness or hearing loss, and identify possible strategies to improve communication accessibility. We analyzed closed- and open-ended survey responses of 656 adults who self-identified as D/deaf or hard of hearing. Over 80% of respondents reported difficulty with understanding others who wore face masks. The proportion of those experiencing difficulty increased with increasing hearing loss severity. Recommended practical supports to facilitate communication and social interaction included more widespread use of clear face masks to aid lip-reading; improved clarity in policy guidance on face masks; and greater public awareness and understanding about ways to more clearly communicate with adults with hearing loss while wearing face masks.

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in increased use of face masks worldwide. Here, we examined the effect of wearing a face mask on the ability to recognise facial expressions of emotion. In a within-subjects design, 100 UK-based undergraduate students were shown facial expressions of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral expression; these were either posed with or without a face mask, or with a face mask artificially imposed onto them. Participants identified the emotion portrayed in the photographs from a fixed choice array of answers and rated their confidence in their selection. While overall accuracy was higher without than with masks, the effect varied across emotions, with a clear advantage without masks in disgust, happiness, and sadness; no effect for neutral, and lower accuracy without masks for anger and fear. In contrast, confidence was generally higher without masks, with the effect clear for all emotions other than anger. These results confirm that emotion recognition is affected by face mask wearing, but reveal that the effect depends on the emotion being displayed—with this emotion-dependence not reflected in subjects’ confidence. The disparity between the effects of mask wearing on different emotions and the failure of this to be reflected in confidence ratings suggests that mask wearing not only effects emotion recognition, but may also create biases in the perception of facial expressions of emotion of which perceivers are unaware. In addition, the similarity of results between the Imposed Mask and Posed Mask conditions suggests that prior research using artificially imposed masks has not been deleteriously affected by the use of this manipulation.

Mask wearing has been required in various settings since the outbreak of COVID-19, and research has shown that identity judgements are difficult for faces wearing masks. To date, however, the majority of experiments on face identification with masked faces tested humans and computer algorithms using images with superimposed masks rather than images of people wearing real face coverings. In three experiments we test humans (control participants and super-recognisers) and algorithms with images showing different types of face coverings. In all experiments we tested matching concealed or unconcealed faces to an unconcealed reference image, and we found a consistent decrease in face matching accuracy with masked compared to unconcealed faces. In Experiment 1, typical human observers were most accurate at face matching with unconcealed images, and poorer for three different types of superimposed mask conditions. In Experiment 2, we tested both typical observers and super-recognisers with superimposed and real face masks, and found that performance was poorer for real compared to superimposed masks. The same pattern was observed in Experiment 3 with algorithms. Our results highlight the importance of testing both humans and algorithms with real face masks, as using only superimposed masks may underestimate their detrimental effect on face identification.

Although putting on a mask over our nose and mouth is a simple but powerful way to protect ourselves and others during a pandemic, face masks may interfere with how we perceive and recognize one another, and hence, may have far-reaching impacts on communication and social interactions. To date, it remains relatively unknown the extent to which wearing a face mask that conceals the bottom part of the face affects the extraction of different facial information. To address this question, we compared young adults’ performance between masked and unmasked faces in four different tasks: (1) emotion recognition task, (2) famous face recognition and naming test, (3) age estimation task, and (4) gender classification task. Results revealed that the presence of face mask has a negative impact on famous face recognition and emotion recognition, but to a smaller extent on age estimation and gender classification tasks. More interestingly, we observed a female advantage in the famous face recognition and emotion recognition tasks and a female own-gender bias in gender categorisation and age estimation tasks. Overall, these findings allude to the lack of malleability of the adulthood face recognition and perceptual systems.

Facial attractiveness in humans signals an individual’s genetic condition, underlying physiology and health status, serving as a cue to one’s mate value. The practice of wearing face masks for prevention of transmission of airborne infections may disrupt one’s ability to evaluate facial attractiveness, and with it, cues to an individual's health and genetic condition. The current research investigated the effect of face masks on the perception of face attractiveness. Across four studies, we tested if below- and above-average attractive full faces are equally affected by wearing facial masks. The results reveal that for young faces (Study 1) and old faces (Study 2) a facial mask increases the perceived attractiveness of relatively unattractive faces, but there is no effect of wearing a face mask for highly attractive faces. Study 3 shows that the same pattern of ratings emerged when the bottom-half of the faces are cropped rather than masked, indicating that the effect is not mask-specific. Our final Study 4, in which information from only the lower half of the faces was made available, showed that contrary to our previous findings, highly attractive half-faces are perceived to be less attractive than their full-face counterpart; but there is no such effect for the less attractive faces. This demonstrates the importance of the eye-region in the perception of attractiveness, especially for highly attractive faces. Collectively these findings suggest that a positivity-bias enhances the perception of unattractive faces when only the upper face is visible, a finding that may not extend to attractive faces because of the perceptual weight placed on their eye-region.

Face coverings have been key in reducing the spread of COVID-19. At the same time, they have hindered interpersonal communication, particularly for those who rely on speechreading to aid communication. The available research indicated that deaf/hard of hearing (HoH) people experienced great difficulty communicating with people wearing masks and negative effects on wellbeing. Here we extended these findings by exploring which factors predict deaf/HoH people’s communication difficulties, loss of information, and wellbeing. We also explored the factors predicting perceived usefulness of transparent face coverings and alternative ways of communicating. We report the findings from an accessible survey study, released in two written and three signed languages. Responses from 395 deaf/HoH UK and Spanish residents were collected online at a time when masks were mandatory. We investigated whether onset and level of deafness, knowledge of sign language, speechreading fluency, and country of residence predicted communication difficulties, wellbeing, and degree to which transparent face coverings were considered useful. Overall, deaf/HoH people and their relatives used masks most of the time despite greater communication difficulties. Late-onset deaf people were the group that experienced more difficulties in communication, and also reported lower wellbeing. However, both early- and late-onset deaf people reported missing more information and feeling more disconnected from society than HoH people. Finally, signers valued transparent face shields more positively than non-signers. The latter suggests that, while seeing the lips is positive to everyone, signers appreciate seeing the whole facial expression. Importantly, our data also revealed the importance of visual communication other than speechreading to facilitate face-to-face interactions. Highlights Late-onset deaf people experienced more difficulties in communication and low wellbeing. Severely/profoundly deaf people missed more information and felt disconnected from society. Signers preferred completely transparent face coverings. More frequent use of masks doesn’t necessarily imply more difficulty communicating. Visual communication, pro-social behaviour, and societal structure might help easing communication.

Previous research has shown that face masks impair the ability to perceive social information and the readability of emotions. These studies mostly explored the effect of standard medical, often white, masks on emotion recognition. However, in reality, many individuals prefer masks with different styles. We investigated whether the appearance of the mask (pattern: angular vs. curvy and color: black vs. white) affected the recognition of emotional states. Participants were asked to identify the emotions on faces covered by masks with different designs. The presence of masks resulted in decreasing accuracy and confidence and increasing reaction times, indicating that masks impair emotion recognition. There were no significant effects of angularity versus curvature or color on emotion recognition, which suggests that mask design may not impair the recognition beyond the effect of mere mask wearing. Besides, we found relationships between individual difference variables such as mask wearing attitudes, mask design preferences, individual traits and emotion recognition. The majority of participants demonstrated positive attitudes toward mask wearing and preferred non-patterned black and white masks. Preferences for white masks were associated with better emotion recognition of masked faces. In contrast, those with negative attitudes toward masks showed marginally poorer performance in emotion recognition for masked faces, and preferred patterned more than plain masks, perhaps viewing masks as a fashion item rather than a necessity. Moreover, preferences to wear patterned masks were negatively related to actual wearing of masks indoors and perceived risks of COVID.