Lockdown babies slower to develop important social communication skills

Researchers stressed babies are resilient and inquisitive and will catch up now that ‘normal life’ has resumed. File picture

Lockdown babies learned to crawl sooner but they were slower to learn to wave bye-bye or to point at something new.

New research on a group of pandemic babies suggests they missed key developmental milestones for a range of important social communication skills because of a lack of social interaction due to lockdown, and because of face masks.

But the researchers stressed babies are resilient and inquisitive and will catch up now that ‘normal life’ has resumed.

They have, however, suggested development checks should continue on this group until school age to make sure there are no long-lasting effects.

The research was conducted by a team from the RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, and has been published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

The team said the development of language in babies is complex, with younger babies fixating on the eyes of carers during interactions while older ones tend to shift their gaze from the eyes to the mouth.

Interactions limited

But when Covid hit, and lockdowns and mask-wearing were introduced, it meant babies' interactions with people outside the home were limited, and access to visual and facial cues for language development was potentially restricted.

To gauge the potential impact of these measures, researchers from RCSI and Children’s Health Ireland assessed 309 ‘pandemic’ babies who were all born between March and May 2020, at 12 months of age, and who were part of an allergy study called CORAL, run by Professor Jonathan Hourihane, the head of the department of paediatrics at RCSI.

The researchers looked at their ability to crawl, side-step along furniture, stand-alone, pick up tiny objects with a thumb and index finger, stack bricks, finger feed, know their own name, point at objects, and wave 'bye-bye'.

The results were compared to a pre-pandemic study on just over 1,600 infants, born in Ireland between 2008 and 2011.

The findings showed that slightly fewer CORAL infants had reached social communication developmental milestones than the other group.

Dr Susan Byrne, of RCSI’s department of paediatrics and lead author on the paper, said social isolation arising out of Covid appears to have impacted more on social communication skills than motor skills.

But she added: “Babies are resilient and inquisitive by nature, and it is very likely that with societal re-emergence and increase in social circles that their social communication skills will improve."