The 1st paper from the Social Distancing and Development Study is out: Early Childhood Education & Care during COVID-19 boosts growth in language & executive function (1/7)

RT @BrookesBabyLab: We are part of a new team investigating the impact of Covid lockdowns on young children's development. If your child wa….

RT @Cat_Davies: Publication day!. Sustained benefits of early childhood education and care (ECEC) for young children’s development during C….

Over the coming months, we are hoping to publish further findings about the continued impact of attending childcare settings, the role of caregiver sensitivity in support vocabulary development, and the impact of sleep on early childhood development during the pandemic.

Parents who experienced sustained mental distress during lockdowns reported more child thinking & regulation difficulties. The benefits of enriching activities continued to Spring 2021, but screen time was no longer related to thinking or regulation skills.

We also found that engaging in different activities with your child during the Spring and Winter 2020 lockdowns related to stronger thinking skills, and high screen use was linked to poorer thinking and regulation skills.

We found that attending childcare during the pandemic boosted vocabulary & thinking skills. These benefits were even greater for children from less privileged backgrounds suggesting that access to early childhood education can help level some inequalities.

Our project which has followed over 500 families since the first UK lockdown suggests that the impact of the pandemic on infants and toddlers is quite complicated and varies between families depending on their circumstances @BBCNews @Clarkevanessa.

Thanks to all our collaborators @alexhendry @ShannonPGibson @Cat_Davies Michelle McGillion, Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez @BrookesBabyLab.

We recommend: 1) More support for parents' mental health through social networks including community services and health visitors, 2) Encouraging parents and practitioners to nurture children through enriching activities, 3) Follow-up research to explore screen use further

We found that parents who experienced sustained mental distress during lockdowns reported more child thinking and regulation difficulties. Children who did more enriching activities showed stronger thinking and regulation skills, but screen time was not associated with either

We asked 280 parents of under 3s to complete questionnaires during Spring 2020 & 2021 lockdowns. Parents told us about their mental health and social support, the time their child spent engaging in different activities, and their child's vocabulary, thinking and regulation skills

In this paper, we wanted to understand how babies' and toddlers' thinking, regulation and social skills might be affected by their different experiences at home during the pandemic and associated lockdowns

Our latest paper investigates the impact of parental mental health, parent-child activities and child screen use during the pandemic on early language and thinking skill development:

RT @alexhendry: New paper investigating the impacts of parental mental health, parent-child activities and infant screen use during the pan….

RT @Infantstudies: More time spent on parent-infant enriching activities during the pandemic was associated with stronger infant cognitive….

RT @hls_research: Great to see the research coming out of @BrookesBabyLab @OBU_Psychology featured as part of #FutureThinkers.

Lovely to see Dr Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez from our Social Distancing and Development Study team being highlighted for #IDWGS2022 . Check out what our team of amazing female scientists have been working on:

RT @BrookesBabyLab: Great to see families enjoying our activity packs! These are based on our new study ( & talking….

These results prompted us to find out about the barriers parents face to engaging in a range of activities with their child. They said they wanted simple, fun and easy to set up activity ideas so we made these 2 activity packs with our charity partners:

We recommend more support for community services that help parents to engage in a range of activities with their child, and investing in #libraries, play settings and communal spaces for families