Eva Murillo Sanz, Eva Murillo Sanz, Marta Casla Soler and Miguel Lázaro:
Social interactions in the first months of life are fundamental for babies to learn how to communicate and develop their language skills. Physical contact, touch, smiling and our first face-to-face “conversations” are the pillars on which we build our understanding of the social world.
The limits placed on social interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic profoundly affected these early interactions. We interacted less and with fewer people and had to go without some basic aspects of communication, such as physical touch or sharing objects.
For children born during the pandemic, it is easy to conclude that their first interactions were so different that it impacted their development.
Our team conducted research into the development of language in Spanish children born during or just before the pandemic. We found that they developed more slowly than children born before.