Dissociations between short and long-term effects of coronavirus pandemic closures: The case of math fluency

Abstract

Over the last years, many studies have explored the effect of the Coronavirus pandemic closures on learning and discovered that it resulted, mostly, in learning loss. However, studies that tested the long-term effects of the closures are lacking. Hence, the effects of the closures on the ability to solve addition or multiplication facts, in typically developing children and children with developmental dyscalculia were tested. A group of children that were in the 1st and 2nd grades during the closure were selected and were tested 2 years later. Another group of children with similar characteristics, before the closures (during 2018), served as the control group. Interestingly, concerning multiplication, participants who were during the closures showed improved abilities. Children with developmental dyscalculia showed weakness in addition and multiplication but with more severe weakness in multiplication. These results indicated that learning loss is related to the time of acquisition of the subject matter.