Dataset Information

Impact of face masks and sunglasses on emotion recognition in South Koreans.

ABSTRACT: Due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, wearing masks has become essential for social interaction, disturbing emotion recognition in daily life. In the present study, a total of 39 Korean participants (female = 20, mean age = 24.2 years) inferred seven emotions (happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, disgust, anger, surprise, and neutral) from uncovered, mask-covered, sunglasses-covered faces. The recognition rates were the lowest under mask conditions, followed by the sunglasses and uncovered conditions. In identifying emotions, different emotion types were associated with different areas of the face. Specifically, the mouth was the most critical area for happiness, surprise, sadness, disgust, and anger recognition, but fear was most recognized from the eyes. By simultaneously comparing faces with different parts covered, we were able to more accurately examine the impact of different facial areas on emotion recognition. We discuss the potential cultural differences and the ways in which individuals can cope with communication in which facial expressions are paramount.

SUBMITTER: Kim G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8812856 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Impact of face masks and sunglasses on emotion recognition in South Koreans.

Kim Garam G Seong So Hyun SH Hong Seok-Sung SS Choi Eunsoo E

PloS one 20220203 2

Due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, wearing masks has become essential for social interaction, disturbing emotion recognition in daily life. In the present study, a total of 39 Korean participants (female = 20, mean age = 24.2 years) inferred seven emotions (happiness, surprise, fear, sadness, disgust, anger, surprise, and neutral) from uncovered, mask-covered, sunglasses-covered faces. The recognition rates were the lowest under mask conditions, followed by the sunglasses and uncovered cond ...[more]

PMID: 35113970

Similar Datasets

Project description:Teachers and students are wearing face masks in many classrooms to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Face masks disrupt speech understanding by concealing lip-reading cues and reducing transmission of high-frequency acoustic speech content. Transparent masks provide greater access to visual speech cues than opaque masks but tend to cause greater acoustic attenuation. This study examined the effects of four types of face masks on auditory-only and audiovisual speech recognition in 18 children with bilateral hearing loss, 16 children with normal hearing, and 38 adults with normal hearing tested in their homes, as well as 15 adults with normal hearing tested in the laboratory. Stimuli simulated the acoustic attenuation and visual obstruction caused by four different face masks: hospital, fabric, and two transparent masks. Participants tested in their homes completed auditory-only and audiovisual consonant recognition tests with speech-spectrum noise at 0 dB SNR. Adults tested in the lab completed the same tests at 0 and/or -10 dB SNR. A subset of participants from each group completed a visual-only consonant recognition test with no mask. Consonant recognition accuracy and transmission of three phonetic features (place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing) were analyzed using linear mixed-effects models. Children with hearing loss identified consonants less accurately than children with normal hearing and adults with normal hearing tested at 0 dB SNR. However, all the groups were similarly impacted by face masks. Under auditory-only conditions, results were consistent with the pattern of high-frequency acoustic attenuation; hospital masks had the least impact on performance. Under audiovisual conditions, transparent masks had less impact on performance than opaque masks. High-frequency attenuation and visual obstruction had the greatest impact on place perception. The latter finding was consistent with the visual-only feature transmission data. These results suggest that the combination of noise and face masks negatively impacts speech understanding in children. The best mask for promoting speech understanding in noisy environments depend on whether visual cues will be accessible: hospital masks are best under auditory-only conditions, but well-fit transparent masks are best when listeners have a clear, consistent view of the talker's face.

Dataset Information

Impact of face masks and sunglasses on emotion recognition in South Koreans.

Publications

Impact of face masks and sunglasses on emotion recognition in South Koreans.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets