Does masking affect child language performance? (Surrain et al., 2023)

Purpose: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has prompted changes to child assessment procedures in schools such as the use of face masks by assessors. Research with adults suggests that face masks diminish performance on speech processing and comprehension tasks, yet little is known about how assessor masking affects child performance. Therefore, we asked whether assessor masking impacts children’s performance on a widely used, individually administered oral language assessment and if impacts vary by child home language background.Method: A total of 96 kindergartners (5–7 years old, n = 45 with a home language other than English) were administered items from the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Preschool–Second Edition Recalling Sentences subtest under two conditions: with and without the assessor wearing a face mask. Regression analysis was used to determine if children scored significantly lower in the masked condition and if the effect of masking depended on home language background.Results: Contrary to expectations, we found no evidence that students scored systematically differently in the masked condition. Children with a home language other than English scored lower overall, but masking did not increase the gap in scores by language background.Conclusions: Our results suggest that children’s performance on oral language measures is not adversely affected by assessor masking and imply that valid measurements of students’ language skills may be obtained in masked conditions. While masking might decrease some of the social determinants of communication (e.g., recognition of emotions), masking in this experiment did not appear to detract from children’s ability to hear and immediately recall verbal information.Supplemental Material S1. Multiple regression predicting odd items sum score as a function of Group A (masked) and Group A by sentence comprehension interaction, as a continuous and a dichotomized variable.Supplemental Material S2. Multiple regression predicting even items sum score as a function of Group B (masked) and Group B by sentence comprehension interaction, as a continuous and a dichotomized variable.Supplemental Material S3. Multiple regression predicting odd items sum score as a function of Group A (masked), controlling for study condition.Supplemental Material S4. Multiple regression predicting even items sum score as a function of Group B (masked), controlling for study condition.Supplemental Material S5. Testing interactions between group and home language, controlling for study condition.Surrain, S., Mesa, M. P., Assel, M. A., & Zucker, T. A. (2023). Does assessor masking affect kindergartners’ performance on oral language measures? A COVID-19 Era experiment with children from diverse home language backgrounds. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 54(4), 1323–1332. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_LSHSS-22-00197

目的：持续的COVID-19疫情促使学校对儿童评估程序进行了调整，例如评估者使用口罩。针对成人的研究指出，口罩的使用会降低言语处理和理解的性能，然而关于评估者佩戴口罩如何影响儿童表现的信息却知之甚少。因此，本研究旨在探究评估者佩戴口罩是否会影响儿童在广泛使用的、个体实施的口头语言评估中的表现，以及这种影响是否因儿童家庭语言背景而异。方法：共招募了96名幼儿园儿童（5至7岁，其中45名儿童的家庭语言非英语），在两种条件下进行临床语言基础评估幼儿版第二版回忆句子子测试：评估者佩戴口罩和不佩戴口罩。通过回归分析确定儿童在佩戴口罩条件下是否得分显著降低，以及佩戴口罩的影响是否依赖于家庭语言背景。结果：与预期相反，我们没有发现学生在佩戴口罩条件下系统性地得分不同的证据。家庭语言非英语的儿童整体得分较低，但佩戴口罩并未加剧因语言背景差异而产生的得分差距。结论：我们的研究结果提示，儿童在口头语言测试中的表现并未因评估者佩戴口罩而受到不利影响，并暗示在佩戴口罩的条件下仍可获得有效的学生语言技能测量。尽管佩戴口罩可能会降低某些社会交流的决定因素（例如情绪识别），但在此实验中，佩戴口罩并未显示出对儿童听觉和即时回忆口头信息的负面影响。补充材料S1：通过多元回归分析预测奇数项总分作为组A（佩戴口罩）和句子理解交互作用的函数，作为连续变量和二元变量。补充材料S2：通过多元回归分析预测偶数项总分作为组B（佩戴口罩）和句子理解交互作用的函数，作为连续变量和二元变量。补充材料S3：通过多元回归分析预测奇数项总分作为组A（佩戴口罩）的函数，同时控制研究条件。补充材料S4：通过多元回归分析预测偶数项总分作为组B（佩戴口罩）的函数，同时控制研究条件。补充材料S5：测试组和家庭语言之间的交互作用，同时控制研究条件。Surrain, S., Mesa, M. P., Assel, M. A., & Zucker, T. A. (2023). 评估者佩戴口罩是否会影响幼儿园儿童在口头语言测试中的表现？COVID-19时期针对不同家庭语言背景儿童的实验。语言、言语和听力学校服务，54(4)，1323–1332. https://doi.org/10.1044/2023_LSHSS-22-00197