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Babies of 10 months and toddlers of around three years growing up during the corona pandemic saw no difference between a happy and an anxious face. This is the conclusion reached by youth researchers at Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ. Their findings were published in the scientific journal .

The Utrecht researchers wanted to know whether the social restrictions in place during the pandemic, such as reduced personal interactions and wearing mouth caps, affected the early brain development of babies and toddlers. Youth researcher Carlijn van den Boomen: "At that age, children learn a lot from observing faces. They learn to distinguish and interpret emotions." Van den Boomen and her colleagues wondered whether a reduced variety of exposure to faces affects how children process faces and whether they can distinguish between different emotional expressions.

Nearly 1,000 children

The youth researchers, involved in the Utrecht YOUth study, examined almost 1,000 children. Before the pandemic, 462 children took part within this long-term study on healthy child development, during the pandemic it was 473 children. Van den Boomen: "That is a large study for our field. Never before have we been able to study the effects of a reduced variety of social input on such a large scale."

Difference between two emotions

The researchers measured the children's brain activity while looking at happy and scared faces. Before the pandemic, the researchers saw that babies‘ and toddlers’ brains noticed the difference between these two emotions. But during the pandemic, children of this age were no longer able to tell the difference between a happy and scared face. This seemed to be mainly because they processed happy faces less well. "The brain responded differently to happy faces. The children seemed to be less familiar with happy faces."

Parents and policymakers need to know what effects the policies in place at the time had on these young children

Policy at the time

Van den Boomen says the research findings are of great importance. Not only for parents, but also for policymakers: "It concerns so many children. Parents and policymakers need to know what effects the policies at the time had on these young children." The research shows how important it is for children to see different people. "Only by getting a lot of experience with different people, with different situations, do children learn to interpret different emotions."

Future

Whether children learned to distinguish emotions again after the corona period, youth researchers have not yet been able to investigate. "However, we do see that 10-month-old children had slower social development during the pandemic, but that this recovered afterwards." Van den Boomen argues that there is good hope that emotion processing also improved again. "But even if so, other long-term consequences cannot be ruled out. Consequences from a period when children's brains could not distinguish emotions. Recognising emotions is so important for social development and for learning. It is possible that this also caused the children to develop less well in other areas during the corona period."