Abstract
<p>Background: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted children's educational and developmental environments, but its consequences have been studied mainly through academic achievement. We examined whether objective neurocognitive performance differed before, during, and after the pandemic, and whether differences were domain-, context-, and metric-specific rather than global.Method: Participants were 33,459 children and adolescents (M age = 13.93 years, SD = 2.49; 48.4% female) assessed January 2018-December 2024 with the Penn Computerized Neurocognitive Battery. COVID period was coded as pre-pandemic (n = 4,411), acute disruption (n = 5,208), and post-acute (n = 23,840). Age-standardized accuracy, speed, and efficiency scores across nine domains were analyzed with linear mixed-effects models (children nested within families), with school type as a focal factor, and income group and sex as covariates.Results: Period-related differences were robust but domain- and metric-specific. Verbal and spatial memory were lower during and after the pandemic, with spatial memory showing the largest effect; spatial memory speed continued to slow post-acutely. Response speed slowed across several domains, often without loss of accuracy and sometimes with improved accuracy (e.g., abstract reasoning). Attention, by contrast, was faster during and after the pandemic and more efficient afterward, with progressive improvement in efficiency and speed. The COVID Period × School Type interaction was nonsignificant, though the consistency of the dominant patterns across school types was visually uneven.Conclusions: Pandemic-period cognitive functioning reflected changes within specific cognitive systems rather than uniform decline. Memory was most vulnerable and several effects persisted post-acutely, whereas attention and reasoning accuracy were preserved or enhanced. Separating efficiency, accuracy, and speed is essential, and speed effects warrant replication.Keywords: neurocognition, COVID-19, pandemic, lockdown, virtual learning</p>