教師佩戴口罩類型對幼兒認知、語言、社會與情緒發展之影響

Abstract

嚴重特殊傳染性肺炎（coronavirus disease 2019, COVID-19）於2019年底爆發後，政府開始實行不同防疫政策來防堵疫情擴散。其中，強制民眾於室內外佩戴口罩的政策雖然保護民眾健康，但同時也遮蓋了臉部部分訊息，改變過去人們習慣的溝通方式。當佩戴口罩成為日常，使得幼兒在家庭外的人際互動都大量暴露於需佩戴口罩的環境時，口罩對於幼兒發展的影響相當值得研究與討論。本研究目的為探討教師佩戴口罩類型對於幼兒認知、語言、社會與情緒發展之影響。研究參與者為來自大臺北地區ㄧ間幼兒園四個班之37名幼兒，並依原先班級架構指定分配兩班為教師佩戴一般口罩組與兩班為教師佩戴透明口罩組。參與研究之幼兒則全程佩戴一般醫療用口罩。研究介入時長為55個上學日。幼兒之主要照顧者在接受研究介入前填寫幼兒發展評估問卷，並於研究介入完成後再次填寫評估問卷。本研究採用線性迴歸進行分析。結果顯示，幼兒的主動性表現會受教師佩戴口罩一般口罩或是透明口罩而有差異，佩戴透明口罩有助於增加幼兒在主動性上的表現。但整體而言，幼兒認知、語言、社會和情緒發展不會受到教師佩戴一般口罩或是透明口罩而有差異，甚至佩戴一般口罩有助於增加幼兒在讀寫萌發和情緒理解上的表現。研究者依此研究結果提出建議供家長、教師及相關領域研究者作為參考，以利了解口罩與防疫政策對幼兒發展之影響。

With the outbreak of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in late 2019, the government started to implement different epidemic prevention policies to prevent the spread of the epidemic. The mandatory wearing of face masks both indoors and outdoors protected people’s health and safety, but it also changed the way people used to read faces and communicate. When wearing masks becomes a daily routine and preschoolers are exposed to masked environments for hours of interactions outside of the home, the impact of masks on preschoolers’ development is worthy of study and discussion. The purpose of this study was to understand the effects of teachers’ mask wearing types on preschoolers’ cognitive, linguistic, social and emotional development.The study was carried out in collaboration with a preschool in northern Taiwan. 37 preschoolers all wore regular medical mask and were assigned to the group of teachers wearing mouth-transparent medical masks and the group of teachers wearing regular medical masks according to their original class. The intervention lasted for fifty-five school days. The developmental evaluation questionnaire for preschoolers was filled out by parents both prior to and after the trial intervention.Linear regression was used for analysis. The results showed that preschoolers’ assertiveness performance varied depending on whether teachers wore a mouth-transparent or a regular mask, with mouth-transparent mask helping to increase preschoolers’ assertiveness performance. However, whether a teacher wore a mouth-transparent mask or a regular mask had no significant difference in overall preschoolers’ cognitive, linguistic, social, and emotional development. Furthermore, the use of regular masks was found to improve preschoolers’ literacy emergence and emotional understanding performance.The conclusion in the final part trying to provide guides for parents, teachers and researchers as a reference to understand the effects of mask-wearing on preschoolers’ development.