ArticleInfancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies2023
The impact of face masks on infants' learning of faces: An eye tracking study.
Article in Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Face perception and impact of face masks at 6 months post-term age in preterm and term infants (The BabyFace Study).Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Variations in face experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic affect infants' preference for their mother's face.PloS one · 2026Article
- Maternal anxiety during pregnancy predicts infant attention to affective faces.Journal of affective disorders · 2024Article
- Infants' Visual Preference for Upright Faces During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan.Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant StudiesArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
This preregistered study examined how face masks influenced face memory in a North American sample of 6- to 9-month-old infants (N = 58) born during the COVID-19 pandemic. Infants' memory was tested using a standard visual paired comparison (VPC) task. We crossed whether or not the faces were masked during familiarization and test, yielding four trial types (masked-familiarization/masked-test, unmasked-familiarization/masked-test, masked-familiarization/unmasked-test, and unmasked-familiarization/unmasked-test). Infants showed memory for the faces if the faces were unmasked at test, regardless of whether or not the face was masked during familiarization. However, infants did not show robust evidence of memory when test faces were masked, regardless of the familiarization condition. In addition, infants' bias for looking at the upper (eye) region was greater for masked than unmasked faces, although this difference was unrelated to memory performance. In summary, although the presence of face masks does appear to influence infants' processing of and memory for faces, they can form memories of masked faces and recognize those familiar faces even when unmasked.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.