I wish the "Methods" section got a bit more info the assessments themselves.
These kids are a maximum of two years old. It's not like they're sitting down with math worksheets. From my (limited) understanding, most cognitive assessments in children that age have to do with responsiveness to stimuli.
It would help to know what they're testing specifically, and if it could be something extremely specific to the test that's being impacted by common covid practices, rather than the child's cognitive development as a whole.
"In this work, therefore, we specifically sought to explore individual and population-level trends in infant
and early child neurodevelopment. Analyses of cognitive development, assessed using Mullen Scales
of Early Learning [40], a population normed and clinically administered tool that assesses function
across the five primary domains of fine and gross motor control, visual reception, and expressive and
respective language via direct observation and performance, provides some of the first direct evidence
of the developmental impact of the COVID-19 pandemic."
"The Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL) is a standardized assessment that is commonly used in clinical psychology as a developmental measure of cognitive development (Mullen, 1989, 1995). The MSEL is organized into 5 subscales: (a) gross motor, (b) fine motor, (c) visual reception (or non-verbal problem solving), (d) receptive language, and (e) expressive language. An early learning composite score can be derived from fine motor, visual reception, receptive language, and expressive language scales. For young children this early learning composite score is considered equivalent to a more traditional “IQ” score or a developmental standard score." (https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/mullen-scale...)
It's small wonder <2yo children born into this atmosphere would have underdeveloped receptive and expressive language skills.
I doubt this will prove an accurate measurement of their general cognitive development over time. Once the children are exposed to unmasked people with the frequency that used to be considered normal, their skills in that area will probably catch up...assuming what was previously considered "normal" ever does return.
I would be interested too if those tests were performed with facemasks for the investigators or maybe fully remote. They mostly seem to focus on the modelling and not how they gathered the data pre/during pandemic.
These kids are a maximum of two years old. It's not like they're sitting down with math worksheets. From my (limited) understanding, most cognitive assessments in children that age have to do with responsiveness to stimuli.
It would help to know what they're testing specifically, and if it could be something extremely specific to the test that's being impacted by common covid practices, rather than the child's cognitive development as a whole.