About this session

Saturday, 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM

The COVID-19 Pandemic's Impact on Young Children’s Social and Emotional Development: Insights and Surprises

Despite the extensive body of work analyzing the effects of COVID-19 on children’s academic outcomes, only a small subset of research has investigated the influence of the pandemic on young children’s social and emotional skills, a critical component of all healthy development. This paper symposium offers a collection of insights into this unique line of inquiry with four quantitative investigations of both short-term outcomes and longer-term trajectories. While each individual paper adopts a developmental perspective on young children’s social and emotional skills, the set of papers addresses a range of outcomes across diverse populations within the context of educational settings and familial life. Paper 1 analyzes how in-person attendance at preschools influenced the advancement of children’s executive function, early literacy, and numeracy skills in the year following the onset of COVID-19. Taking a more longitudinal perspective, Paper 2 investigates how the pandemic influenced the development of children’s executive functioning skills across multiple years examining trajectories before and after its onset. Relatedly, Paper 3 assesses the impact of school closures on the growth trajectories of social-emotional skills in light of familial hardships. Sharing this contextual approach, Paper 4 analyzes how behavioral health and family well-being changed across several years as a consequence of the pandemic's wide-ranging impacts. Taken together, the findings of these four papers reveal insights and surprises that can inform practitioners, policymakers, and researchers in their continued response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Paper #1
Title	Examining Head Start Preschoolers' Executive Function, Early Literacy, and Numeracy Skills during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Presenting author	Kathleen Lynch, University of Conecticut, United States

Paper #2
Title	The Impact of COVID-19 on Young Children’s Executive Function: A Longitudinal, Population-based Study
Presenting author	Stephanie M. Jones, Harvard University, United States

Paper #3
Title	Are The Kids Mostly Alright? COVID School Closures' Surprisingly Minimal Effects on Children’s Social-Emotional Outcomes
Presenting author	Anne Martin, Georgetown University, United States

Paper #4
Title	Changes in children’s behavioral health and family well-being before and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic
Presenting author	Alan Mozaffari, UC Berkeley, United States

View all paper details

Session chair
Stephanie M. Jones, Ph.D., Harvard University, United States

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