According to a new study from New York, babies got slightly lower scores on a test of their developmental ability if they were born during the first months of the pandemic than those born before the pandemic.
The infants were screened for social skills, communication skills, and motor skills at six months using a standard form. The questions were about their ability to roll from back to stomach, how often they babble, and other milestones.
The children had lower scores in most areas if they had been born during the pandemic. This is regardless of whether the mothers had been infected with covid during pregnancy.
However, the differences were minor between children born before and after the pandemic began. In addition, there was no higher incidence of developmental delays.
The score in social skills and fine and gross motor skills was lower among the pandemic children, but their score in communication skills was slightly higher.
Brown University associate professor of pediatric research Sean Deoni has researched the cognitive skills of children born during the pandemic but was not involved in the study.
“The children met an adult world where everyone wore mouth guards, everyone was psychosocially stressed, and society was constantly in an emergency. So the explanation is probably multifactorial. ”, comments David Grönte, chief physician in psychiatry, active in Linköping, Sweden
