Masks may make a difference when it comes to baby’s speech and and language development. That’s the upshot of a recent article at Scientific American, Masks Can Be Detrimental to Babies’ Speech and Language Development. The article echoes our own conclusions from several months ago in Face Masks: What Happens When Baby Can’t See Faces? But babies are most often at home with their parents, especially during the frequent lockdowns of the coronavirus pandemic. Since masks are unnecessary at home, baby is still able to get plenty of mask-less face time. This face time at home, offsets the issue of delayed speech and language development as a result of the need for face masks in daycare and outside the home.
The author of the article at Scientific American, David J. Lewkowicz, does however make the point that babies begin lip-reading at 8 months. Lewkowicz, a senior scientist at Haskins Laboratories and an adjunct professor in the Yale Child Study Center, Yale University, says that masks mean babies are missing important visual cues about language. Which is exactly what we surmised back in October:
Infants and toddlers watch our faces for important clues about language and social situations. That is why it is so important that they can see our faces without anything getting in the way, for instance, a face mask that covers mouth and nose. But what happens when babies can’t see half our faces—our mouths, cheeks, and noses—in everyday situations?
Masks Mean Missing Cues
In his own article, Lewkowicz explains that babies begin to babble at around 8 months, when they become interested in speech and language. That is why they start lip-reading at this precise point in time. Babies are now looking for anything that helps them understand this fascinating new means of communication: speech. By reading lips, says Lewkowicz, babies glean important visual cues that help them for instance, figure out “which face goes with which voice.” But when the adults around them are wearing face masks, babies miss out on the information they need to make sense of what they hear.
According to Lewkowicz, bilingual babies appear to depend on lip-reading more than their single-language peers. Adults may not notice the subtle differences our lips and mouths make when speaking different languages, but babies are more attuned to these visual cues. Visual speech cues can help babies who speak more than one language distinguish between them. Babies–even more so bilingual babies–look to read lips in order to make sense of speech and language. Face masks make it that much harder for babies to pick up the visual cues that help them understand what they hear.
Many of us adults can well understand baby’s predicament. With the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, and the necessity for face masks, a large number of adults have now learned that they too, depend on lip-reading to understand speech. We first understand this when a masked clerk in a store is speaking to us, and we realize we have no clue what he or she is saying. This may be because we’re hard of hearing, or because the store is crowded, with lots of background noise. Or it may be because of a clerk’s unfamiliar accent or unclear speech. No matter the reason, lip-reading adds extra clues and context to help us make sense of what we hear.
Masks: No Lips to Read
Bottom line? It sounds funny, but without lips, many of us just can’t hear. So why should we expect our babies, so new to speech and language, to be any different? Faced with a face that is covered with a mask, baby loses out on many of the clues he needs to make sense of this new thing called “speech.”
The pandemic hasn’t been around long enough for any long term studies to have been published to tell us the effect of face masks on baby’s ability to acquire speech and language. To tell the truth: COVID-19 hasn’t been around long enough for anyone to be an expert on any aspect of the disease or its impact. So we can only look at the available information and draw the most logical conclusions.
In the case of babies’ speech and language development, we know only that babies use lip-reading to help them understand and make sense of what they hear. We also know that babies who do more lip-reading, have better language skills when they are older. If face masks translate to no lips to read, the obvious conclusion is that the speech and language skills of babies living through the pandemic are going to suffer in this area, at least to some degree.
Wear Masks Anyway, Outside the Home
We guessed as much back in October, and Lewkowicz confirms that this is the case. But even he concludes that we need more research to know for a fact that face masks may be detrimental to the acquisition of speech and language in babies. Masks, meantime, are an important tool in keeping our babies safe. No one thinks it is a good idea to sacrifice baby’s health for the sake of having more visual speech cues. So keep on masking up when out of doors, and make sure baby’s caregivers do the same.
While the pandemic continues, however, make sure you spend lots of time with your baby at home, unmasked, and speaking face to face. Read to your baby and share lots of stories and rhymes. Babies are very good at adapting to any and all conditions. If you give your little one lots of face time, we have every confidence that your baby will soon be babbling away like the best of them–in spite of the lack of visual cues he or she encounters when outside of your home.
Izzy says
I would love to see the data you are referring to when you claim that masks keep anyone safe. The UK government’s own data shows they have absolutely no effect on the spread of anything – except fear and isolation. Based on all the data I have found it is clear that everyone should ditch their mask immediately and smile at every child they see.
Varda Epstein says
There is a great deal of data suggesting that masks keep people safe. Here are just a few studies–there are many more out there:
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118
“The preponderance of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical contexts. Public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high.”
https://www.poverty-action.org/sites/default/files/publications/Mask_Second_Stage_Paper_20211108.pdf.pdf
“The intervention reduced symptomatic seroprevalence (adjusted prevalence ratio (aPR) = 0.91 [0.82, 1.00]), especially among
adults 60+ years in villages where surgical masks were distributed (aPR = 0.65 [0.45, 0.85]).
Mask distribution and promotion was a scalable and effective method to reduce symptomatic
SARS-CoV-2 infections.”
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-face-masks-what-you-need-to-know
“Can wearing a face mask prevent coronavirus from spreading?
Yes. Since the coronavirus can spread through droplets and particles released into the air by speaking, singing, coughing or sneezing, masks are very helpful to prevent the virus from spreading in crowded indoor public places, especially those that contain a mixture of vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.”
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-mask-co-says-can-protect-wearers-against-delta-variant-673171
“The Israeli mask company Sonovia has released a report showing that its trademark SonoMask should be equally protective against the Delta variant than the original Wuhan strain.
https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-made-mask-eliminates-over-99-percent-of-coronavirus-lab-tests-suggest-644434
“The mask was tested by the VisMederi laboratory to determine the antiviral activity of its fabric, which is coated in zinc oxide nano-particles that destroy bacteria, fungi and viruses. When tested against two new variants – though not the Delta variant specifically – it was found to show “potent antiviral activity,” according to Prof. Amos Adler, director of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory at Tel Aviv University.”