Masked or not, I smile to you: Exploring full-term and preterm infants' social smiles to adults wearing a protective facemask

<p>This database includes the raw data linked with the paper &ldquo;Exploring full-term and preterm infants&rsquo; social smiles to adults wearing a protective facemask&rdquo;, published on Infant Behavior and Development Journal, doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2024.101947. This publication explores early emergence of social smiles in preterm (PT) and full-term (FT) infants at 3 months (corrected age for prematurity) and how the use of protective facemasks by adults affects the display of social smiles.</p> <p>Procedures</p> <p>We enrolled 30 FT and 30 PT infants (gestational age &le; 32 weeks). Infants' social smiles displays were assessed at 2&ndash;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). Social smiles were coded in each 15 s sequence as 0, absent or 1, present at least once.</p> <p>Analytical plan</p> <p>A 2-block hierarchical logistic regression was used, firstly testing for differences in probability of social smiles display in the three mask conditions (masked mother &ndash; MM, masked stranger &ndash; MS, and unmasked mother &ndash; UM) (Model 1) and subsequently exploring possible additional effects of group (full term &ndash; FT, preterm &ndash; PT) and facial expression (smiling, neutral, frown, and interactive) (Model 2).</p> <p>Findings in brief</p> <p>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 &ndash; 3-month-age.<span>&nbsp; </span></p>