Fig. 1From: Transparent masks reduce the negative impact of opaque masks on understanding emotional states but not on sharing thema Example photographs depicting happy, neutral, and sad expressions for Opaque mask, Transparent mask, and No mask conditions; b Sample trial progression. Participants were presented with a contextual sentence for 4000Â ms. A fixation cross in duration of 200Â ms preceded the presentation of a stimulus photograph displaying a congruent emotion while wearing an opaque mask, a transparent mask, or no mask. The face stimulus was shown for 2000Â ms. Affective theory of mind responses were collected by asking participants to rate, on a scale from 1 (negative/low) to 9 (positive/high), how positive or negative the protagonist was feeling and the intensity of their emotion. Each response screen remained visible until responseBack to article page