> ...Children born in the pandemic have significantly reduced cognitive performance
In the COVID-19 pandemic means we're talking about 2yr old toddlers and younger. Assessing toddler's cognitive abilities is not trivial by any means, let alone using it as a basis for far-fetched projections. So first thing that comes to mind is sampling approach.
Also a factor is a degree of social interaction, as it got harder to keep kids in peer groups esp. during the lockdowns and work from home stretches.
Either way, at this age 'performance' is almost meaningless term. There's plenty of ways and time to 'catch-up'.
You're assuming linearity, which is almost certainly not the case over the span of a human lifetime. Catching up is going to require a lot of investment from a lot of different people over a long period of time, and in many cases will probably fail, and from what the evidence in this particular study shows is that the high impact group so happens to be (predictably) those of lower SES - read that as the poor get poorer.
"...Since 2011, 1224 cognitive assessments were collected from 672 healthy, full-term, and
neurotypically-developing children between 3 months to 3 years of age. Repeated measures were
separated by at least 1 year (mean = 384 +/- 41 days). A general overview of all child assessment timings are shown in Figure 1a. This dataset included 1070 assessments (from 605 children) prior to
March 2020; 154 assessments (from 118 children) between March 2020 and June 2021; with 39 children who were born just prior to the pandemic in 2018 and 2019, and following during the pandemic to
2021..."
The cognitive assessment tool:
40. E.M., M., Mullen Scales of Early Learning. 1995, Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance
Services, Inc.
The age of the kids 'born during pandemic' in this context is up to 18months, not clear how many in count, but total is 39 born from 2018 to 2021. Pandemic start considered March 2020.
P.S. As for the Mullen Scales, citing from [1]:
"...Motivation can affect test results; therefore it is important to enhance motivation as much as possible in young children without affecting standardized procedures of the assessment (Koegel, Koegel, & Smith, 1997).
...
When young children refuse to attempt test items it can be difficult to determine their current level of functioning..."
In the COVID-19 pandemic means we're talking about 2yr old toddlers and younger. Assessing toddler's cognitive abilities is not trivial by any means, let alone using it as a basis for far-fetched projections. So first thing that comes to mind is sampling approach.
Also a factor is a degree of social interaction, as it got harder to keep kids in peer groups esp. during the lockdowns and work from home stretches.
Either way, at this age 'performance' is almost meaningless term. There's plenty of ways and time to 'catch-up'.