Facemasks reduce face trustworthiness perceived by deaf individuals.

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Audiology
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Facemasks became ubiquitous during the COVID-19 pandemic, posing challenges for deaf individuals reliant on lipreading.
• The mouth region is vital for inferring emotions and forming social impressions.
• The impact of facemasks on social inferences, specifically trustworthiness, in deaf versus hearing individuals remains under-explored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether facemasks affect social inferences, particularly trustworthiness judgments, differently in deaf and hearing individuals.
• To explore the role of visual facial cues, specifically the mouth region, in social perception.

Main Methods:

• Participants (deaf and hearing) evaluated the trustworthiness of computer-generated faces.
• Faces were manipulated to display varying levels of trustworthiness.
• Some faces were presented with facemasks occluding the mouth region.

Main Results:

• Deaf and hearing individuals performed similarly in judging faces without facemasks.
• Deaf individuals rated faces with facemasks as less trustworthy compared to hearing participants.
• This suggests facemasks impede the processing of essential facial information for deaf individuals.

Conclusions:

• Facemasks significantly impact trustworthiness judgments for deaf individuals by obstructing vital mouth cues.
• The occlusion of the mouth area prevents holistic facial processing, hindering communication and social interaction for the deaf community.
• Understanding these challenges is crucial for developing more inclusive communication strategies.