Peer-reviewed article
Executive Functions in Children from Low-Income Neighborhoods During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence of Multidirectional Changes
Julian Busch, Maike Graf, Birgit Leyendecker ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study tracked 369 children from low-income neighborhoods in Germany before and after a six-month COVID-19 lockdown to measure changes in their executive functions (thinking skills like attention and self-control). Some cognitive abilities got worse during lockdown, particularly in children whose families provided less nurturing care, while selective attention improved. The findings suggest that pandemic stress affected different thinking skills in different ways, with family support playing a protective role.
Key points
- Cognitive flexibility and effortful inhibition deteriorated during the lockdown period
- Selective attention improved during the same period
- Deterioration in effortful inhibition occurred only in children with lower levels of family nurturing care
- Effects of pandemic adversity on executive functions were multidirectional, not uniformly negative
- Family capacity to provide nurturing care appears to protect children's executive function development
Limitations
The study measures only three specific executive function domains and cannot determine whether changes persist beyond the study period or whether improvements in selective attention reflect meaningful benefits. It relies on teacher reports of family nurturing care, which may not fully capture the complexity of family support during crisis.
Abstract
In a sample of 369 children from low-income neighborhoods in Germany (Mage = 8.49 years; 50.41% female), we (1) investigated changes in children’s executive functions (EFs) during the COVID-19 pandemic, and (2) explored whether families’ nurturing care could protect children’s EFs. We repeatedly examined children before and after a six-month lockdown period with school closures in late 2020 and mid-2021. We used the Flanker/Reverse Flanker Task to assess subdomains of children’s EFs (cognitive flexibility, effortful inhibition, selective attention), and we asked home-room teachers about families’ capacities to provide nurturing care. Multi-level modeling showed that task performances requiring cognitive flexibility and effortful inhibition deteriorated throughout the lockdown period while selective attention improved. The deterioration in effortful inhibition occurred in children with lower levels of nurturing care only. Our study suggests multidirectional effects of pandemic-related adversity on the EFs of socioeconomically disadvantaged children. Future research should distinguish between the effects of environmental adversity on bottom-up versus top-down dominated EFs.