Masked or not, I smile to you: Exploring full-term and preterm infants' social smiles to adults wearing a protective facemask.
Infant Behav Dev
; 75: 101947, 2024 Jun.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38593528
ABSTRACT
The early emergence of social smiles is an important milestone of infants' socio-emotional development. Our aim was to assess how the use of protective facemasks by adults affects the display of social smiles in preterm (PT) and full-term (FT) infants at 3 months (corrected age for prematurity). We enrolled 30 FT and 30 PT infants (gestational age ≤ 32 weeks). Infants' social smiles displays were assessed at 2-3-month-age (corrected) across a three-episode (masked mother; unmasked mother; masked adult female stranger) videotaped interactive task. During each episode, the adult was instructed to maintain specific facial expressions (happy-smiling, sad-frowning, neutral-unresponsive) for 15 second windows and then instructed to interact spontaneously for 45 s (of which the first 15 s were coded). FT and PT infants did not differ in the display of social smiles. In both groups, social smiles were mostly exhibited in response to happy/smiling and spontaneously interacting partners. Overall, no effect of wearing a protective facemask emerged. The use of protective facemasks did not result in a lower display of social smiles. The findings suggest that FT and PT might be equally sensitive to their adult interactive partners in terms of social smiles displays at 2-3-month-age.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Smiling
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Infant, Premature
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Facial Expression
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Masks
Limits:
Adult
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Female
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Humans
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Infant
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Male
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Newborn
Language:
En
Journal:
Infant Behav Dev
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Publication country:
EEUU
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ESTADOS UNIDOS
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ESTADOS UNIDOS DA AMERICA
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EUA
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UNITED STATES
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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US
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USA