ArticleInfant and child development
Early childhood education and care (ECEC) during COVID-19 boosts growth in language and executive function.
Article in Infant and child development. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Early Child Development: A Systematic Review & Meta-Analysis.Journal of developmental and behavioral pediatrics : JDBPPooled it
- Failure to replicate effects of parent-delivered early language intervention: Evidence from a randomised controlled trial with implications for universal language intervention.JCPP advances · 2026Article
- The Impact of COVID-19 in Brazil Through an Educational Neuroscience Lens: A Preliminary Study.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Language learning in the context of a global pandemic: proximal and distal factors matter.Pediatric research · 2025Article
- Annual Research Review: How did COVID-19 affect young children's language environment and language development? A scoping review.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2025Article
- The Impact of COVID-19 on the Language Skills of Preschool Children: Data from a School Screening Project for Language Disorders in Greece.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Early Childhood Development and Mental Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Comparative Studies.Psychology international · 2024Article
- Rates of family history of autism and ADHD varies with recruitment approach and socio-economic status.The British journal of developmental psychology · 2024Article
- Social inequalities in early childhood language development during the COVID-19 pandemic: a descriptive study with data from three consecutive school entry surveys in Germany.International journal for equity in health · 2024Article
- Risk and Protective Factors for Executive Function in Vulnerable South African Preschool-Age Children.Journal of cognition · 2024Article
- Unlocking the forest: An ethnographic evaluation of Forest Schools on developmental outcomes for 3-year-olds unaccustomed to woodland spaces.Wellcome open research · 2024Article
- More frequent naps are associated with lower cognitive development in a cohort of 8-38-month-old children, during the Covid-19 pandemic.JCPP advances · 2023Article
- Developmental and behavioural outcomes at 2 years in babies born during the COVID-19 pandemic: communication concerns in a pandemic birth cohort.Archives of disease in childhood · 2023Observational
- Maternal immune activation and role of placenta in the prenatal programming of neurodevelopmental disorders.Neuronal signaling · 2023Review
- Pre-K and Kindergarten Teacher Perception of School Readiness During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Early childhood education journal · 2023Article
- Parental Resources in Parents of Children with Special Needs (SNs) at the Time of COVID-19.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Analysis of the influences of social isolation on cognition and the therapeutic potential of deep brain stimulation in a mouse model.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Toward a dimensional model of risk and protective factors influencing children's early cognitive, social, and emotional development during the COVID-19 pandemic.Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies · 2023Article
- Toddler-teacher interaction and teachers' sensitivity as predictors of toddler's development during COVID-19: Stability or change over time.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Delta and Omicron: protective measures and SARS-CoV-2 infections in day care centres in Germany in the 4th and 5th wave of the pandemic 2021/2022.BMC public health · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
High-quality, centre-based education and care during the early years benefit cognitive development, especially in children from disadvantaged backgrounds. During the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lockdowns, access to early childhood education and care (ECEC) was disrupted. We investigate how this period affected the developmental advantages typically offered by ECEC. Using parent-report data from 189 families living in the UK, we explore associations between time spent in ECEC by 8-to-36-month-olds, their socioeconomic background, and their growth in language and executive functions between Spring and Winter 2020. Receptive vocabulary growth was greater in children who continued to attend ECEC during the period, with a stronger positive effect for children from less advantaged backgrounds. The growth of cognitive executive functions (CEFs) was boosted by ECEC attendance during the period, regardless of socioeconomic background. Our findings highlight the importance of high-quality ECEC for the development of key skills and for levelling socioeconomic inequalities.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.