From the Guardian news section:

Children born during pandemic have lower IQs, US study finds

Researchers blame lack of stimulation as parents balanced childcare with working from home

Natalie Grover Science correspondent
@NatalieGrover
Thu 12 Aug 2021 14.45 EDT

Children born during the coronavirus pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor and overall cognitive performance compared with children born before, a US study suggests.

… With limited stimulation at home and less interaction with the world outside, pandemic-era children appear to have scored shockingly low on tests designed to assess cognitive development, said lead study author Sean Deoni, associate professor of paediatrics (research) at Brown University.

In the decade preceding the pandemic, the mean IQ score on standardised tests for children aged between three months and three years of age hovered around 100, but for children born during the pandemic that number tumbled to 78, according to the analysis, which is yet to be peer-reviewed.

From the study:

One aspect also not investigated here is the impact of mask-wearing by the study staff during child visits and assessments. The inability of infants to see full facial expressions may have eliminated non-verbal cues, muffled instructions, or otherwise altered the understanding of the test questions and instructions.

I presume that a lot of this “IQ” test of infants has to do with reaction to faces, which masks can’t help.

But The Experts tell you not to worry about the effects of masks on babies.

Babies and young children study faces, so you may worry that having masked caregivers would harm children’s language development. There are no studies to support this concern. Young children will use other clues like gestures and tone of voice. https://t.co/Rj1pnT6Bfk pic.twitter.com/rrO9yTujNi

— American Academy of Pediatrics (@AmerAcadPeds) August 12, 2021

After all, there are “no studies to support this concern.” Whether there are any studies at all on the subject is not reported. The theory appears to be that because blind children turn out just fine (they do, don’t they?), all will be well.

[Comment at Unz.com]