Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1, Canada; Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, Canada.
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, Canada; Department of Languages, Literature and Communication, Utrecht University, 3512 JK Utrecht, The Netherlands.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2023 Dec;236:105744. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2023.105744. Epub 2023 Jul 22.
The disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has raised concerns about children's development. Here, we examined the impact of the pandemic on Canadian infants' and toddlers' (N = 539) language development. Specifically, we assessed changes in 11- to 34-month-olds' activities that are known to affect vocabulary development (i.e., screen and reading times). We also compared these children's vocabulary sizes with those of 1365 children collected before the pandemic using standardized vocabulary assessments. Our results show that screen and reading times were most negatively affected in lower-income children. For vocabulary growth, no measurable change was detected in middle- and high-income children, but lower-income 19- to 29-month-olds fared worse during the pandemic than during pre-pandemic times. Moving forward, these data indicate that educators and policymakers should pay particular attention to children from families with lower socioeconomic status during times of crisis and stress.
由 COVID-19 大流行引起的混乱引起了人们对儿童发展的关注。在这里，我们研究了大流行对加拿大婴儿和幼儿（N=539）语言发展的影响。具体来说，我们评估了已知会影响词汇发展的 11 至 34 个月大婴儿活动的变化（即屏幕和阅读时间）。我们还将这些孩子的词汇量与大流行前使用标准化词汇评估收集的 1365 名儿童的词汇量进行了比较。我们的研究结果表明，屏幕和阅读时间对低收入儿童的负面影响最大。对于词汇增长，中高收入儿童没有发现可衡量的变化，但在大流行期间，29 个月以下的低收入儿童表现不如大流行前时期。展望未来，这些数据表明，教育工作者和政策制定者在危机和压力时期应特别关注来自社会经济地位较低家庭的儿童。
