Do Facial Masks Influence Joint Attention Between Infants and Their Caregivers?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, children frequently interacted with people wearing facial masks. Little is known, however, about how this affects young children’sinteractions with their caregivers. In this within-subjects study, we explored whetherfacial masks influence young children’s initiation and response to joint attention. Wemeasured joint attention episodes in interactions of 12- to 15-month-old infants withone of their caregivers using two standardised and free-play tasks. In one experimental condition, the caregivers wore a facial mask; in the other, they did not. The results show no significant differences in joint attention between the two conditions. Infants may have interacted with their caregivers wearing facial masks previously and are not influenced in their joint attention when the lower part of the caregiver’s face is concealed. Preface: This paper is associated with the paper “How Do Facial Masks Impact Infants’ Joint Attention?”. In the current text, we describe additional hypotheses and report the according analyses, results, and discussion.