Learning about Germs in a Global Pandemic: Children’s Knowledge and Behavior Before and After COVID-19

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Attention, Learning, Memory

Abstract

Understanding the underlying mechanisms that predict illness-related avoidant behavior in children is an essential component in preventing the spread of contagious diseases. While there is considerable research exploring children’s reasoning about contagion, the global coronavirus pandemic has created an ecologically valid opportunity to observe how children’s learning is affected by public health interventions. The purpose of this study is to replicate and extend earlier findings from Blacker & LoBue (2016) which suggest the best predictor of avoidant behavior is not age but rather the ability to predict illness transmission. Additionally, by comparing the knowledge and causal predictability of children during the pandemic to those of a comparable cohort immediately prior to the pandemic, we can examine how naturally occurring contagion-related interventions influence learning in young children.

Using video-conferencing, we tested children 4-5 years old (N=30) and children 6-7 years old (N=30) on three tasks: a declarative knowledge task (DK) used in Blacker & LoBue (2016), an illness avoidance test, and a causal prediction (CP) task. The purpose of the DK task was to assess children’s ability to predict and explain illness transmission scenarios. Participants were read two vignettes paired with photographs of children presented as having a contagious condition (cold) and a non-contagious condition (toothache). They were then asked whether each condition could be transmitted by interacting with the child and to explain their reasoning. Following this task, an illness avoidance test was administered to measure avoidance of toys previously used by the children in each vignette. The goal of the final CP task was to determine participants’ causal reasoning ability. In this task, children identified which characters were most likely to get sick based on exposure to an illness with varying degrees of (1) exposure time (2) proximity and (3) number of germ transfers from a sick individual.

Consistent with our previous research (Blacker & LoBue, 2016), we found that older children (6-7years) performed significantly better on all measures compared to younger children (4-5 years) (p’s<.05). To examine the potential influence the pandemic has on children’s knowledge about contagion, the performance of the younger group from the online sample was compared to that of a cohort (N=31) collected in person immediately prior to the covid-19 pandemic. Relative to participants tested prior to the pandemic, preschool-aged children in the pandemic group demonstrated greater declarative knowledge (p<.05) and greater causal reasoning ability for proximity (p<.005), but no significant differences in illness avoidance task. Our results suggest that even in the preschool years, increased exposure to causal explanatory mechanisms supports germ reasoning, which has the potential to translate to appropriate generalization of avoidance behaviors. Such results are critical for developing interventions that increase safe behaviors in young children returning to school during a pandemic.

Authors

• Dakota Ryan Reis, Rutgers University - Newark
  Presenting Author

• Lauren Leotti, Rutgers University - Newark
  Non-Presenting Author

• Nicole Pochinki, Rutgers University - Newark
  Non-Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Bonawitz, Rutgers University - Newark
  Non-Presenting Author

• Vanessa Lobue, Rutgers University
  Non-Presenting Author