Here’s a scientific argument I’ve co-written with Josette Serres, baby research engineer at the CNRS, in partnership with the association« Ensemble pour l’éducation de la petite enfance » and the« Enfance et Covid » website. To download the leaflet and print it for professionals and/or parents, click HERE.

PREAMBLE

It’s not a question of being for or against the mask, but of finding solutions that reconcile the gestures that protect us from the virus and the conditions essential to the proper cognitive and social development of children. We shouldn’t have to choose between the plague and cholera! Wearing a mask and barrier gestures must never be allowed to hinder this learning process. We need to combine the two intelligently.

Our aim is to alert early childhood professionals to the critical periods in the brain’s development during which essential skills for living in society are acquired . All our arguments are based on recent scientific research. The first year is decisive, and children cannot repeat it!

1/ Trajectories for integration into the human world: Why the wearing of masks by early childhood professionals is worrying

• In order to survive, the baby must very quickly be able to recognize its congeners: (Tanaka, 2014)[1]

• It is the combination of the eye, nose and mouth areas to identify facial expression. From birth, the mouth (lower part of the face) appears to be a better cue than the eyes and eyebrows (upper part of the face) in discriminating the interlocutor’s facial expressions (Field, 1982 and 1983[2]). Regardless of ethnic characteristics the mouth appears to be a best indicator for detecting the interlocutor’s facial expression (cross-cultural research by Yuki, 2007[3]).
• Once these recognition modes have been acquired, the baby will be able to differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar faces, which is vital for survival (Sangrigoli and Schonen, 2004)[4].
• Research into early competence tells us that infants have a natural natural attraction to smiling faces and that smiling is a way of capturing the baby’s gaze and attention (Delavallée, 2009)[5]. In return, the baby will produce smiles to keep his attachment figure close by and thus create a bond.

• To communicate its needs, the baby will very quickly learn the language of its fellow creatures.

• Babies have an extraordinary capacity for language learning.

Before birth and up to 6 months, research shows that babies are able to discriminate the sounds of all languages. They have an « absolute ear ». From 6-8 months, accelerated sound learning begins, and continues until 10-12 months.. During this crucial periodbabies make progress in their mother tongue, but lose their ability to recognize sounds specific to other languages. He becomes an expert in his mother tongue. Two mechanisms come into play in this learning process: the statistical distribution of sounds and social interaction. It is therefore essential to speak directly to your baby from the very first months of life for effective learning of the mother tongue. According to P. Kuhl[6], this involves face-to-face face-to-face.

• The synchronization of sounds with mouth movements aids capture. Studies show that language learning takes place through a physically present physically present adult not a robot, or even a video. No « tuto » for learning to speak! (Yeung, 2013)[7]. With an impoverishment of language stimuli, we risk accentuate social inequalities (for some children from disadvantaged backgrounds, attending a childcare center can compensate for social inequalities by immersing the child in a stimulating language bath). One study[8] shows that as early as the 10th month of life, differences in babbling can be perceived according to the parents’ languages.

Conclusion: the mask disrupts the acquisition of communication fundamentals (for a review of the issues, see Gliga, 2003)[9]. As Delavallée (2009) points out [10]emotions are at the heart of our social exchanges, and emotional facial emotional facial expressions provide essential information. What’s more, there’s a window of time during which the baby’s brain stores the sounds of its tongue, and then produces its first words. This stock is fed by frequent face-to-face frequent face-to-face interactions with adults.

2/ Benchmarks for assessing a child’s language development

During the first year, the baby…

• Emits prolonged vocalizations
• Turns head to look at speaker
• Clearly expresses pleasure or displeasure through mimicry and shouting
• Laughs as it plays
• Reacts to his first name
• Gets people’s attention by gesturing and shouting
• Pronounce syllables (ba – da)
• Pronounces double syllables (baba – dada)
• Say a 2-syllable word
• Shake your head « no
• Designates an object on request and fetches an object on request

During the second year, the young child…

• Say a few words
• Can name body parts on request
• Makes two-word sentences, then three-word sentences
• Use his first name to talk about himself, then use the pronouns « I », « you », « he »…

Warning: the various benchmarks given above are for guidance only. We know that the trajectory of language development is particularly variable from one child to the next.

3/ Warning signs

A word of caution : children who speak little or poorly in early childhood don’t always catch up.

Children who at 24 months of age have fewer than 50 words in their production lexicon and/or do not combine words are described as having a language delay (LR) (Rescorla & Schwartz, 1990).[11]. Half of children with a language delay at 24 months will have a language level below that of their age group at 3 years (Paul, 2000). [12]. In continuity, 82% of 30-month-olds with delays will still have below-average language skills at age six (Capone Singleton, 2018) [13]. More specifically, language delay at age two is associated with poorer lexis at age 4 and greater academic difficulties at age 5.

Families need to be reminded that a 3-year-old’s language level is a predictor of future academic success.

Research (McIntyre et al., 2017) assessed the language skills of 731 3-year-olds. The authors then cross-referenced this data with their academic skills at age 5, and then with their school career at ages 7, 8 and 9. Their conclusions: children with a lower level of language skills at age 3 are more likely to have delayed school learning and to repeat a grade. And this is true regardless of the child’s gender, origin, family, parental income or educational background.

When to worry

When it comes to communicating, young children :

• emits a little Babillage
• does not use pointing
• has difficulty following with his finger (joint attention)
• is inward-looking
• little calls
• sleeps more than usual
• flees the relationship

When it comes to speaking, the young child :

• No isolated word production at 18 months
• Does not associate two or three words by 24 months
• Still unintelligible after 24 months
• At 30 months, expresses himself mainly through gestures and does not understand simple instructions. Does not use short sentences.
• After 36 months, still unable to form a sentence (3 words including a verb)
• Do not use personal pronoun « I » beyond 36 months
• shouts and speaks loudly
• Gets angry and hits often

4/ Ways to stimulate language development

• Talk to the child, eye-to-eye (at the same height), in a calm/quiet environment and, of course, without a mask.
• Read bedtime stories (to be included in the bedtime ritual)
• Avoid exposing children to screens of any kind (tablet, television, computer).
• Avoid exposure to electronic toys (or remove the batteries!)
• Playing with your child
• Verbally comment on actions
• Turn off background music or radio when child is present
• Take the pacifier out of the child’s mouth when talking to him and when he talks to you.
• Turn off the TV when the child is in the room, even if he or she is not watching.
• Take the time to name the objects around him and to name the objects he is pointing to.
• Rephrase words and phrases they don’t pronounce correctly (in moderation)
• Avoid using « baby » words (pin-pon, ouah ouah, dodos)
• Avoid talking about yourself in the third person singular (« I’m going to change your diaper » rather than « Carol is going to change your diaper »).

For pros:

• Encourage as much time as possible in small groups with babies and take advantage of the physical distance respected between adults to remove the mask.
• Advise parents to limit the time their child spends at the facility
• Increase staffing levels (if possible!)

End notes :

• Even professionals equipped with transparent masks must remain vigilant to the evolution of communication and language in the children in their care. In addition to obscuring the nose area, these masks do not offer optimum vision of the face.
• The risks posed to children’s language development by early childhood professionals wearing masks must be weighed against the balance of somatic benefits and risks (for children and adults), given the current state of the pandemic and scientific data.

---

[1] J. W. Tanaka, P. C. Quinn, B. Xu, K. Maynard, N. Huxtable, K. Lee, and O. Pascalis. The effects of information type (features versus configuration) and location (eyes versus mouth) on the development of face perception J Exp Child Psychol. 2014 August ; 124: 36-49.

[2] Field, T. M., Woodson, R., Greenberg, R., & Cohen, D. (1982). Discrimination and imitation of facial expression by neonates. Science, 218(4568), 179-181.

Field, T.M., Woodson, R., Cohen, D., Greenberg, R., Garcia, R. & Collins, K. (1983), Discrimination And Imitation of facial expressions by term and preterm neonates, Infant Behavior and Development, 6, 485-490.

[3] Yuki, M., Maddux, W. W., & Masuda, T. (2007). Are the windows to the soul the same in the East and West? Cultural differences in using the eyes and mouth as cues to recognize emotions in Japan and the United States. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(2), 303-311.

[4] Sangrigoli S, de Schonen S. (2004). Recognition of own-race and other-race faces by three-month-old infants. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45

[5] Lavallée, M. & Cossette, L. (2009). Infants’ visual responses to their mother’s facial expressions during free face-to-face interaction situations. L’Année psychologique, vol. 109(4), 585-606. https://doi.org/10.4074/S0003503309004011

[6] P. Kuhl et al , Infants Show a Facilitation Effect for Native Language Phonetic Perception Between 6 and 12 Months April 2006 Developmental Science 9(2):F13-F21

[6] P. Kuhl et al, Foreign-language experience in infancy: Effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning August 2003 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100(15):9096-101

[7] H. Henny Yeung and Janet F. Werker (2013) Lip Movements Affect Infants’ Audiovisual Speech Perception. Psychological Science. 24: 603

[8] B. de Boysson -Bardies. Comment la parole vient aux enfants. Odile Jacob 1996

[9] T Gliga (2003)Face recognition by infants. Medicine and childhood

[11] Rescorla, L., & Schwartz, E. (1990). Outcome of toddlers with expressive language delay. Applied Psycholinguistics, 11, 393-407.

[12] Paul, R. (2000). Predicting outcomes of early expressive language delay: Ethical implications. In D. V. M. Bishop & L. B. Leonard (Eds.), Speech and language impairments in children: Causes, characters, intervention and outcome (pp. 195-209): Hove, UK: Psychology Press.

[13] Capone Singleton N. Late Talkers: Why the Wait-and-See Approach Is Outdated. Pediatr Clin North Am. 2018 Feb;65(1):13-29. doi: 10.1016/j.pcl.2017.08.018. PMID: 29173713.