Limited interaction with the outside world and lack of stimulation at home have hampered cognitive development in the crucial early years of childhood, a leading research writer and assistant professor of pediatrics (research) at Brown University Sean Deoni said caretaker.
The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, included overall cognitive scores for 672 children in the state of Rhode Island, of which 188 were born after July 2020 and 308 before January 2019.
The majority of children in the study were white. Everyone was born full-time, and no one had known developmental disabilities. The average IQ for children aged three months and three years was about 100 in the previous decade, but the number of children born during a pandemic dropped to 78.
In addition, the scores were particularly low from a socioeconomic background. Because the children in the study belonged to a relatively affluent part of the United States, the researchers fear that the results may be even worse in economically weaker regions and countries.
Tahira Sequeira
Helsinki Times