UC Merced research shows pandemic impacted preschoolers' social skills

MERCED, Calif. (KFSN) -- Researchers have been studying how the pandemic has created learning loss for school-aged students.

But newly published research out of UC Merced is showing another group of children, those too young to be in school, may have also been impacted.

UC Merced Professor of Psychological Sciences Rose Scott leads a research team inside the Scott Lab.

"All of the actual research itself takes place in one of these three rooms that you see here," Scott said.

It was in those rooms that Scott and her team collected data by studying nearly 100 children ages three and a half to five and a half.

The work began before the pandemic on an unrelated project.

Data collection was paused during the lockdown and when it started again post-pandemic, Scott says she recognized a change in the data while measuring a skill called "false belief."

"This is our ability to understand that other people can have different ideas from ours, and those ideas could be wrong. Like, you could be mistaken about where you parked your car or where you left your keys," Scott said.

Scott says they test children's skills by showing short videos or acting out scenarios with puppets.

One scenario includes "Piggy" putting her favorite toy in the wooden box.

After she leaves, "Doggie" takes the toy out of the wooden box and puts it in the red box.

"Doggie" leaves and "Piggy" returns.

The child is asked where "Piggy" would look for her toy.

"In order to answer that correctly, they have to have tracked 'What Piggy does know, what does Piggy not know?'" Scott said.

Scott says, after the pandemic, kids -- regardless of whether they were 3 or 5 -- were doing much worse with the skill.

Scott hypothesizes the skills may not have been developed because kids were no longer attending preschool or daycare, they had fewer interactions with children their age or things possibly changed at home.

Those who came from lower socio-economic backgrounds were hit hardest.

She says while the overall impact is unclear, she hopes this draws attention to a younger population that may have also been impacted by the pandemic.

She says without the "false belief" skill, research shows kids may perform worse in school and may struggle to make friends.

"What I'm hoping people realize is there could be differences in those younger kids as well, and those kids are now in school and you might be seeing consequences of that even though they weren't in school when the actual lockdown happened," Scott said.

Scott says they've started looking at children born after the pandemic, and the data is showing closer to what they would expect for children at that age.

She says that means there could be a group of children growing up and going through the school system who potentially may not be able to rebound.

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