2022 Volume 33 Issue 4 Pages 325-331
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed social conditions, with concerns about its impact on children's mental health and socioemotional development . However, only a few Japanese studies have offered a comparison of children's behaviors before and during the pandemic or analyzed longitudinal changes as the pandemic was taking place. Therefore, we present cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, conducted by the authors, that examined socioemotional behavior (among children 4 to 9 years old) and psychological distance to caregivers and others (among children 0 to 9 years old) at four time points: prepandemic (T0), April 2020 (T1), October 2020 (T2), and February 2021 (T3). According to the results of these studies, children's socioemotional behavior hardly changed at these four time points and that their psychological distance from caregivers and others was influenced by the pandemic. These findings were discussed considering the issues surrounding cross-sectional and longitudinal research methods.
