Among more than 200 4-year-olds born during COVID lockdown in England, executive function was lower than pre-pandemic norms in an observational study.The picture for language was more mixed, with higher-than-expected results for receptive language, but lower-than-expected results for expressive language.Other developmental characteristics -- including non-verbal reasoning, expressive vocabulary, and receptive vocabulary -- were actually better than pre-pandemic norms.
Children born during England's COVID lockdown appeared to have markedly lower executive function than expected for their age, interim results of a cross-sectional observational study showed.
Among more than 200 4-year-olds born from March to June 2020, executive function was lower than pre-pandemic norms on two caregiver-reported scales (Global Executive Composite [GEC], Cohen's d=-0.47; Emergent Metacognition Index [EMI], d=-0.36), according to Nicola Botting, PhD, of City St. George's University of London, in the U.K., and colleagues.
In further analyses, when benchmarked against non-verbal reasoning ability, scores on both scales were significantly below cognitive potential, they added. And about a third of children were one or two standard deviations away from published norms for both of those scales, they reported in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
