Impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on the development of emotion understanding of children living in a Eurasian collectivistic society (Russia)

The impact of culture on the development of children's emotion understanding has become an increasingly prominent focus of research. However, one fundamental dimension of culture has so far been almost completely overlooked in this field: history. In this study, we aimed to investigate the potential impact of a major dramatic historical event, the COVID-19 lockdown, on emotion understanding in children living in a Eurasian collectivist society (Russia). Specifically, we asked whether the lockdown influenced children's emotion understanding development and, if so, whether this influence was positive or negative. The present study examined the one-year development of emotion understanding in children who experienced a six-month total COVID-19 lockdown (Pandemic sample), compared with children who did not experienced such a lockdown (Control sample). Both samples were community samples of 5–6-year-old children from middle-SES families, drawn from the same city and preschools and matched on age, sex, non-verbal intelligence (Raven), and mother tongue (N = 673 in total). Children in both samples were assessed twice (at ages 5; 6 and 6; 6 years) for their understanding of a wide range of emotional components using the Russian version of the Test of Emotion Comprehension. The lockdown was negatively associated with children's one-year development of emotion understanding. Although children in both samples made developmental gains, improvement in the Control sample was substantial and consistent with typical developmental trajectories, whereas gains in the Pandemic sample were minimal and almost stagnant by comparison. A possible explanation for these findings is that the lockdown disrupted the virtuous circle between children's emotion understanding and their social interactions, with interactions within the immediate family becoming predominant and those outside the family sharply reduced. We hypothesize that social interactions beyond the immediate family play an important protective role in the development of emotion understanding, and that their prolonged absence may be particularly consequential in collectivistic societies. In this view, restricting children's social interactions to their immediate family could constitute a risk factor for the development of emotion understanding. Limitations and future directions are also discussed (long-term follow-up, direct measures of cultural values and practices, etc.).

A long line of research supports the idea that one of the main factors associated with the development of children's emotion understanding is their social interactions inside and outside the family, and that in turn, the nature of these social interactions is also related to children's emotion understanding, forming a kind of virtuous circle (e.g., Harris et al., 2016 for reviews). These interactions are further shaped by the cultural values of the society in which children and their families live, reflecting cultural practices at a particular time and in a particular context, space (e.g., Mesquita et al., 2016 for reviews). Adapting Élisée Reclus's assertion in L'Homme et la Terre (1905) that “geography is history in space, while history is geography in time,” we propose, following the steps of Lev Vygotsky, that historical events and periods shape culture across time, whereas cultural values and practices shape history in space. A culture cannot be fully understood apart from its history, just as history cannot be fully understood apart from its culture (see Figure 1A: theoretical hypothesis).

Six years ago, the world experienced a dramatic major historical event that profoundly challenged these social interactions /cultural practices and cultural values: the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying near-total physical lockdown. The primary objective of the present study was to examine empirically, for the first time, how this dramatic historical event might have influenced the development of children's understanding of a wide range of emotional components in a Eurasian society characterized by collectivistic cultural values and practices, namely contemporary Russia.

Emotion understanding can be viewed as the emotional side of theory of mind and the declarative dimension of emotion competence/emotional intelligence. Emotion understanding and emotions entertain a circular relationship where our understanding of emotions shapes our emotions, and our emotions, in turn, shapes our understanding of emotions. Emotion understanding can be defined as the capacity to understand the nature, causes, and consequences of emotions, whether expressed or experienced, pleasant or unpleasant, simple or complex, in oneself and in others. The main function of emotion understanding is to identify, explain, control, regulate, and predict emotions, as well as their expression and experience, in everyday life, both in oneself and in others, whether alone or in interaction with others (Pons and Harris, 2019; Pons et al., 2019).

40 years of research on the development of emotion understanding

Numerous studies on the development of emotion understanding have been conducted during the last 40 years. At least five valid and reliable results, primarily established in Western contexts, have emerged from this large corpus of research (e.g., Tang et al., 2026; Cheng et al., 2026, for recent reviews). First, as children grow older, they not only know more emotions and more about them (quantitative development), but also in different ways, progressing from an understanding of some external, expressed, visible, simple components of emotions to an understanding of more internal, experienced, invisible, complex components of emotions (qualitative development). This development is organized into three age-related stages where earlier stages are a necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition for the emergence of the later stages. The first stage (“external”) coincides with ages 3–5, when children begin to understand some of the external causes of emotions: they recognize basic emotions such as happiness, anger, fear, and sadness from facial expressions and body postures (and even prosody), and they understand the influence of external circumstances and desires on emotions. The second stage (“mental”) emerges between ages 5–7. Children gradually begin to realize that beliefs and memories can cause emotions, and that some emotions can be concealed (i.e., they distinguish between the appearance and the reality of emotions). The third stage (“reflective) appears between ages 7–9, when children start to understand how to regulate emotions using cognitive strategies (in addition to social and behavioral strategies). They also recognize that moral rules can influence emotions (e.g., pride, shame, guilt) and that emotional states can be the result of mixtures of emotions of different valances and arousals (ambivalence). Second, from early childhood there are important and stable typical and atypical individual differences (e.g., ASD, hard-of-hearing, Down) in the development of emotion understanding, these individual differences being sometimes as important as the developmental differences. Third, the cognitive characteristics and social and emotional experiences of children and their families are variables that contribute to the development and individual differences in children's emotion understanding. Verified factors include the child's emotional experiences, language abilities, executive functions, and verbal and non-verbal intelligence. They also include social interactions that help the child explore his zone of proximal development, both outside the immediate family (e.g. with peers, other adults) and within the home, such as family conversations about emotions, the child's attachment relationships to the main caregiver (both later internalized by the child), and the mother's sensitivity and responsiveness to her child's emotional needs and desires. Noteworthy, the majority of the studies, conducted in a Western context, do not find significant gender differences in pre-school and school children's understanding of emotions (e.g., Mathieson and Banerjee, 2011; Fidalgo et al., 2018 for discussions). Fourth, emotion understanding has emerged as one of the key predictors of children's psychological wellbeing (self-esteem, anxiety, depression, anger, etc.), prosocial competences (friendship, popularity, cooperation, behavioral problems, etc.), and school achievement (literacy, math, problem solving, etc.). Fifth, because of its multiple positive impacts, emotion understanding has become a major target of an increasing number of intervention studies and programs, first with atypical children (e.g., those with ASD), then with typically developing children as preventive programs. These interventions have progressed from researcher-led experiments to teacher-delivered programs that are now increasingly integrated into standard preschool and school curricula.

This massive corpus of research represents a significant advance in our understanding of the way children understand emotions over time. However, only a fraction of this research has examined the contribution of a factor that many scholars in the human sciences in general, and psychology in particular, regard as one of the main factors of psychological functioning and development, namely, culture (values and practices).

Impact of culture on the development of emotion understanding

Numerous studies have shown that cultural values and practices influence how children express, control, regulate, and talk about emotions (Mesquita et al., 2016, for a review). They showed for example that European American children (rather individualistic culture) learn that high-arousal emotions (such as joy or anger) are ideal, whereas the opposite is true for Taiwanese Chinese children (rather collectivistic culture). European Americans tend to emphasize being upbeat, whereas Chinese individuals place more value on being solemn and reserved. Mothers are generally more supportive of girls' negative emotions than fathers in both European American and African American (rather collectivist culture) families, whereas among European American parents, mothers are also more supportive of boys' negative emotions than fathers. Given that children's emotional experiences influence their understanding of emotion, it seems appropriate to ask how culture affects the ways in which children come to understand emotions.

Less than 1% of research on the development of emotion understanding have addressed the question of the impact of culture on emotion understanding (PsycINFO, July 2026). As in most fields of psychological science, over 85% of this research has been conducted in, and uses methodologies from, so-called “Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic” (WEIRD) societies (i.e., Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Western, Central, Southern, and Northern Europe), which together represent less than 15% of the world's population (e.g., Henrich et al., 2010). Most cross-cultural studies about emotion understanding compare middle-class urban children within WEIRD societies and cultures (Latin, Germanic, Slavic) or compare these children with those from a limited range of non-WEIRD societies and cultures (mainly Far Eastern societies such as China, Japan, and South Korea). Worth noticing, very few studies have examined children's emotion understanding in South America, Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, meaning the emotion understanding of more than 60% of the children in the world still remains a terra incognita today.

Following the steps of Darwin, many researchers agree that the capacity to recognize basic emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise, one of the core components of emotion understanding (emerging during the first “external” stage), is rather universal, without implying that the causes and meanings of these basic emotions are universal (e.g., Ekman, 2016; Harris et al., 2016, for contrasting views). The situation is different for other core components of emotion understanding such as the understanding of the impact of external causes, desires, memories, beliefs, and moral rules on emotions and the understanding of the distinction between appearance and experience of emotions. Across diverse cultural (collectivistic—individualistic), geographical (well-connected towns vs. isolated communities) and socioeconomic (low, middle, high) contexts, research showed both similarities and differences in children's emotion understanding development. Children from China, Japan, and Papua New Guinea display developmental sequences broadly similar to North American and Western European children in using for example mental–emotional terms, understanding the impact of memories on emotions, and recognizing the possibility of hiding emotions (Gut and Mirski, 2016), though Chinese children lag behind European American toddlers in understanding external causes of emotions (Wang, 2008), and European American children show earlier understanding of the impact of memories on emotions, whereas Chinese children show earlier understanding of shame and pride (Chen, 2009). Young Indian girls outperform British girls in understanding that emotions can be hidden (Joshi and MacLean, 1994), and Taiwanese and European American children do not differ overall in emotion explanations, although urban children more often refer to external causes than rural children (Lillard, 2006). In Cameroon, unschooled Baka 5-year-olds perform above chance on false-belief–emotion tasks, with age-related changes resembling Western samples (Avis and Harris, 1991), but Mofu children show delays relative to European peers (Vinden, 2002). Spanish and Zapotec children similarly understand malicious joy at ages 3–5 (Quintanilla and Sarriá, 2009). Quechua children from poor remote rural communities resemble British middle-class urban children in several core components of emotion understanding (basic emotion recognition, external causes, moral emotions, regulation) but differ in finding memory–emotion links harder and mixed emotions easier to understand (Tenenbaum et al., 2004). Studies of SES and urban–rural differences yield mixed results: urban Taiwanese and European American children more often cite external causes (Lillard, 2006); Brazilian urban upper-middle-class children show higher overall emotion understanding than urban lower working-class children, with Brazilian and Italian children scoring above rural Quechua but below British urban children (Roazzi et al., 2009; Minervino et al., 2010); and Italian and German middle-class urban children show similar patterns overall, although Italian children better grasp the distinction between expressed and actual emotions (Molina et al., 2014; Farina et al., 2008).

In summary, depending on the study and on which aspect of emotion understanding is assessed (in general one or two core components at the time), both similarities and differences have been found within and between cultures. Cultural values and practices (i.e., more or less individualism-collectivism, but also hierarchical-egalitarian, gender differentiation-neutral) combined with factors such as age, gender, SES, and place of residence (rural vs. urban) have been sometimes evoked to explain these differences and similarities. However, the results of these studies are not without controversy. For example, findings are not always consistent and differences within cultures (and individuals) are sometimes larger than between cultures. In line with the broader fields of affective science (e.g., Feldman Barrett, 2017) or the history of emotions (e.g., Plamper, 2015), we encounter the same controversy over the (bio-)universal vs. (socio-)cultural nature of emotion understanding. Proponents of the former often claim that the latter overlook the obvious by focusing on the exotic, whereas advocates of the latter argue that the former are blinded by their ethnocentrism (e.g., Harris and Cheng, 2022, for a discussion). Regardless of their position, universalist or culturalist, most researchers recognize that the development of children's emotion understanding is shaped by their social interactions within and outside the immediate family, and much research showed the existence of a virtuous circle between the two. These social interactions can be regarded as social behaviors (cultural practices), as they are themselves guided by social representations (cultural values; e.g., Doise, 1986; Moscovici, 1988; Bruner, 1990).

History as a consubstantial dimension of culture

One fundamental dimension of culture has been almost completely overlooked in these studies, whether intra-cultural or cross-cultural, examining the development of emotion understanding, namely history. Just as a biological organism cannot be fully understood apart from its phylogenetic evolution, a culture cannot be fully understood apart from its historical development. Cultural values and practices, like knowledge, change over time under the influence of historical processes and events and are transmitted from one generation to the next (e.g., Vygotsky, 1978; Bronfenbrenner and Morris, 2007).

Although some primarily theoretical studies have investigated the impact of history on emotions (e.g., Firth-Godbehere, 2021; Plamper, 2015), to the best of our knowledge none have empirically examined how history might influence the way children understand emotions, except in relation to the impact of an historical event, the COVID-19 pandemic, on a rather specific component of emotion: the impact of mask wearing on the recognition of basic emotions in infants and toddlers. For example, Wermelinger et al. (2022) showed that preschoolers (4–6 years) with pandemic experience recognized and labeled emotions on fully visible faces just as well as pre-pandemic children. Gori et al. (2024) found that while face masks initially impaired young children's ability to recognize emotional facial expressions, a follow-up study showed that 3- to 5-year-olds significantly improved over the course of a year. No research has examined the influence of the COVID-19 lockdown on the development of children's understanding of a broad range of emotional components such as the understanding the impact of external causes, desires, memories, beliefs, and moral rules on emotions; the understanding the distinction between the appearance and reality of emotions; and the understanding the possibility of regulating emotions by means of cognitive strategies.

History may shape the development of emotion understanding through long-term historical processes such as colonization, industrialization, decolonization, and globalization, or through more punctual historical events such as revolutions, wars, economic crises, and pandemics. It can also affect the development of emotion understanding both directly (e.g., new emotional experiences and understandings related to punctual historical events such a war or a lockdown related to a pandemic) and indirectly (e.g., reshaping social interactions within and outside the family, cultural values and practices as a consequence of globalization or lockdown). The influence of history on the development of emotion understanding can be positive (e.g., introduction of socio-emotional programs in school curriculum because of educational reforms; interacting more with parents because of a lockdown) or negative (e.g., exclusion of so-called “woke” programs promoting socio-emotional competencies because of changes in ideology, interacting less outside the immediate family because of a lockdown).

In this study we will explore the possible influence of a dramatic specific historical event, the COVID-19 related lockdown, on the development of children's emotion understanding in a specific collective society: Russia at the beginning of the 21st century.

Russian society and culture at the beginning of the 21 st century

Today's Russia is a large country spanning 11 time zones and has approximately 145 million inhabitants (53% women), about 75% of whom live in cities. Modern Russia is not considered as WEIRD society. It is neither fully Western nor fully Eastern, it is a Eurasian society; around 75% of its population lives west of the Ural Mountains; the rest are leaving in Siberia and the Far East. In addition to Russian, there are 35 regional official languages and more than 100 minority languages. Approximately 70% of the population is ethnically Russian (Slavic), and about 50% of Russians identify as Christian (Orthodox). In Russia, about 35% of families with children are mono-parental, roughly 50% raise only one child, and around one-third live in multi-generational homes with at least one grandparent (Federal State Statistics Service, 2023; Pew Research Center, 2019; Hogendoorn and Härkönen, 2023). Russia has the ninth-largest economy in the world by nominal GDP, and the service sector accounts for more than 50% of total GDP. Roughly 60% of the population are working class with low SES (40% in Moscow), about 30% are middle class with medium SES (50% in Moscow), and about 5% are upper class with high SES (10% in Moscow). Russia's income-inequality Gini index is around 35, closer to the low-inequality countries of Northern and Western Europe (around 25) than to the high-inequality countries of Africa and South America (around 50) (Federal State Statistics Service, 2023; Organization for Economic Co-operation Development, 2021; World Bank, 2024; International Monetary Fund, 2024).

There are different ways to define and measure cultural values (see Jahoda, 2012; Triandis et al., 2009, for a review). Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory (Hofstede et al., 2010) has the advantage of providing data for more than 75 countries, being regularly updated, and using a straightforward methodology to assess cultural values (see geert-hofstede.com or theculturefactor.com). According to these surveys, Russia scores high on collectivism and low on individualism, one of the core dimensions of cultural values together for example hierarchical vs. egalitarian or gender differentiate vs. neutral values. This result is supported by many studies (e.g., Hofstede, 2001; Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner, 1998; Shulga, 2017). They suggest that, while elements of individualism may be present in modern Russia, particularly in urban areas, the overall cultural framework leans more toward collectivism, emphasizing family, community, reciprocity and interdependence. In Russian culture, the family is often seen as the core unit of social structure. Loyalty to family and close friends is highly valued, and collective decision-making is common. There is also a strong emphasis on maintaining harmony within the group, which often means avoiding conflict and prioritizing the needs of the group over personal desires. Social relationships in Russia tend to be characterized by reciprocity and interdependence: individuals often rely on each other for support and assistance, which is seen as vital for personal psychological wellbeing. Shared goals and communal achievements are frequently regarded as more important than individual accomplishments. In other words, social interactions within and outside the family are in Russia related to collective cultural values. How did the COVID-19 lockdown affect the social interactions within and outside the family of children from a collectivistic society, such as Russian culture, and by implication the development of their understanding of emotions?

Impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on Russian children

Virtually all children in Russia attend preschool (ages 3–6) and compulsory school (ages 7–15). Russian preschool education (kindergarten) is the first stage of the national general education system and is intended for children aged 3 to 7. Under normal circumstances, children attend preschool five days a week. Most public preschools are open 10–12 h per day. Overall, children spend close to 60% of their weekly awake time in preschool (Rossiyskaya Federatsiya, 2012).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, with the notable exception of Sweden, strict lockdowns were introduced in most countries, including Russia, with the aim of “flattening the curve” of new COVID-19 infections (The Lancet Child Adolescent Health, 2020b). Russian preschools and schools remained completely closed for six months (from March 2020 to August 2020) (Almondes et al., 2021). The physical isolation measures significantly affected children's access to education but also their social interactions inside and outside the family. “Growing up in the shadow of COVID-19” is a figurative description of an entire generation of children who were deprived of typical social interactions and regular education due to the epidemiological situation (The Lancet Child Adolescent Health, 2020a).

As mentioned before children' ability to understand emotions develops within the context of their social interactions inside and outside the family. Through social interactions with other children at school, their teachers, their parents, their siblings, their grandparents' children learn for example to comprehend others' perspectives and desires (Laursen et al., 2001), to respect group and personal boundaries (Farris, 2000; Kyratzis and Guo, 2010), and to maintain social relationships (Comparini et al., 2014). Emotion understanding and social interactions are linked in a virtuous cycle: social interactions promote emotion understanding, and emotion understanding, in turn, facilitates social interactions. For example, Mathieson and Banerjee (2011) demonstrated that joint play with peers is positively associated with emotion understanding, while Liao and colleagues (Liao et al., 2014) showed that children's experience in resolving conflict situations is related to their ability to recognize emotions. Similarly, Viana and colleagues (Viana et al., 2023) found that children with higher levels of emotion understanding (and theory of mind) were more capable of finding solutions in cooperative problem-solving situations. How did the COVID-19 lockdown affect this virtuous circle between social interactions within and outside the family and the development of emotion understanding in Russian children?

The COVID-19 lockdown may have affected directly children's emotional experiences suggesting a potential downstream impact on the development of their emotion understanding. During the lockdown, children were severely deprived of opportunities for social interaction outside the immediate family (no access to preschool, school, playgrounds, extended family, etc.) and were exposed to a less diverse social environment as well as greater potential family dysfunction. For example, children, especially those from disadvantaged families, spent significantly more time in front of screens (The Lancet Child Adolescent Health, 2020a). The lockdown increased the risk of developing other harmful habits, such as overeating, lack of physical activity, and sleep disturbances (Gaudreau et al., 2020; Hassinger-Das et al., 2020). After two months of lockdown, children began to experience difficulties with emotional and cognitive regulation; their behavior worsened, and their motivation to learn decreased (Giménez-Dasí et al., 2020). They also developed irritability, sleep problems, mood swings, apathy, and fear, particularly when family members themselves became ill (Pisano et al., 2020). Parents' psychological wellbeing deteriorated markedly during the pandemic, which in turn affected the psychological wellbeing of their children. The most widespread symptoms reported by parents during isolation were difficulties with attention and concentration, irritability, restlessness, and anxiety (Gaudreau et al., 2020). In addition, high levels of parental stress were found to be significantly correlated with emotional problems in children's behavior (Orgilés et al., 2020) and with externalizing behavior (Bjørk et al., 2020). In other words, the virtuous circle between social interactions inside and outside the family and children's emotion understanding may have been, if not turned into a vicious circle, at least placed under considerable strain during the COVID-19 lockdown.

The COVID-19 lockdown may have indirectly affected the development of children's understanding of emotions. It potentially might have posed a challenge to the collectivist cultural values of contemporary Russia. In such societies, where emphasis is placed on community, family bonds, and group cohesion, the abrupt shift to social distancing and isolation might have posed a particular challenge to deeply ingrained cultural values. As mentioned before, collectivist cultures typically prioritize reciprocity and interdependence over individualism and autonomy, valuing community activities, extended family gatherings, and rituals that reinforce social ties. The COVID-19 lockdown may have disrupted these cultural practices, potentially fostering feelings of isolation and disconnection. The COVID-19 lockdown may have not only disrupted the virtuous circle between social interactions inside and outside the family and children's emotion understanding, but could also might have challenged the cultural values in which this virtuous circle was taking place, potentially highlighting the change overtime of cultural values and practices in response to major historical events (Gao et al., 2022; Leonova and Khavylo, 2021; Tougu et al., 2023).

In summary, the COVID-19 lockdown substantially transformed the lives of children in Russia. It might have disrupted the virtuous cycle between social interactions inside and outside the immediate family and children's emotion understanding. It might have also challenged the collectivist values of Russian society within which this virtuous cycle unfolds. To the best of our knowledge, the association between the COVID-19 lockdown and the development of children understanding of a wide range of components of emotions, both in Russia and elsewhere, has remained unexplored empirically until now (Orgilés et al., 2020). The study we present here aimed to help fill this gap.

Goals of the study

The main goal of the study was to examine the possible influence of a punctual dramatic historical event, the six-month lockdown related to the COVID-19 pandemic (March to August 2020), on the development over one year of preschool children's understanding of a wide range of components of emotions living in a society with collective cultural values and practices: today's Russia (urban middle-class native Russian; see Figure 1B: empirical question). We aimed to determine whether this impact existed and, if so, whether it was positive or negative.

Participants and procedure

The study was conducted in Moscow (Russia) between November 2017 and November 2020 on two community samples. The original sample consisted of 699 children. Twenty-six children were excluded from the analyses because they were not tested on non-verbal intelligence or on emotion understanding at Time 2, resulting in a final sample of 673 children. The first sample (Control, N = 337) was assessed twice before the COVID-19 pandemic: Time 1 = November 2017, Time 2 = November 2018. The second sample (Pandemic, N = 336) was assessed two years later, three months before (T1 = November 2019) the six-month COVID-19 lockdown (March to August 2020), and three months after the lockdown (Time 2 = November 2020). Children in the two samples were of similar age (Time 1 Control: M = 66 months, SD = 3.9 months; Time 1 Pandemic: M = 65 months, SD = 4.0 months), with the same proportion of girls (51%), parents with a similar level of education (higher education over 80% in both samples), and they attended the same kindergartens and lived in the same middle-SES, middle-class neighborhoods.

Children were tested individually in a quiet room within the preschool. Assessments were conducted in the morning (from 9 to 11:30 am). Children's non-verbal intelligence was measured with the Raven, and their emotion understanding with the TEC. Both tests were administered in a single session, in the same order: first the Raven (circa 10 min), then the TEC (circa 15 min).

Measures

The Russian version of the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC; Pons and Harris, 2000; Veraksa et al., 2021) was used to assess children's understanding of emotions. This instrument measures the overall level of emotion understanding in children aged 2–3 to 10–11 years. Nine core components of emotion understanding are assessed with the TEC: (i) recognition of basic emotions; (ii) understanding of the impact of external causes on emotions; (iii) understanding of the impact of desires on emotions; (iv) understanding of the impact of beliefs on emotions; (v) understanding of the impact of memories on emotions; (vi) understanding of the difference between the appearance and reality of emotions; (vii) understanding of the possibility of regulating emotions; (viii) understanding of mixed emotions; and (ix) understanding of the impact of morality on emotions. Each successfully completed component is assigned one point. Therefore, the total score for emotion understanding ranges from 0 to 9 points (e.g., Pons et al., 2004, for a detailed description of the instrument). The Russian version of TEC successfully passed the standardization procedure, and demonstrated good psychometric quality [2/df = 22.702/24 (p = 0.53); CFI = 1.000 > 0.90; RMSEA = 0.000 < 0] (Veraksa et al., 2021) in accordance with other quantitative studies outside Russia (e.g., UK: Pons et al., 2004; Italy: Albanese and Molina, 2008, Cavioni et al., 2020; Germany: Janke, 2008; von Salisch et al., 2013; Spain: Fidalgo et al., 2018; Poland: Stepień-Nycz et al., 2023; Hungary: Nemet et al., 2025; Japan: Mizokawa et al., 2026; China: Tang et al., 2018).

The Raven's Colored Progressive Matrices (Raven et al., 1998) test was used to assess the children's logical reasoning and fluid non-verbal intelligence. The test is non-verbal; children do not have to speak; they only need to point to indicate their answers. It is widely used by researchers and clinicians in both Western and non-Western cultures and societies (Raven, 2000). The test is a visual pattern-completion task. It consists of 36 items of increasing complexity (ranging from simply matching a texture to applying an increasing number of logical rules to identify the missing piece). Each item shows a matrix with one part missing (at the top of the page). The child has to point to the correct missing piece from several alternatives to complete the matrix logically (at the bottom of the page). For each item the child answers correctly, they receive one point, yielding a total score range from 0 to 36 points.

The presentation of the results is divided into two sections. First, we examined whether the Control and Pandemic samples showed similar levels of nonverbal intelligence and emotion understanding at T1, regardless of gender. Second, we investigated whether the COVID-19 lockdown affected the development of children's emotion understanding between T1 and T2, as well as the potential influence of gender and nonverbal intelligence on this development.

Were the two samples similar in emotion understanding and intelligence before the pandemic?

Analysis of variance with Gender (2) and Sample (2) as factors did not show a main effect of Gender or Sample, and no significant Gender × Sample interaction on children's Emotion Understanding at Time 1. Children in both samples had similar levels of Emotion Understanding regardless of gender at Time 1 (Control: M = 5.0, SD = 1.5; Pandemic: M = 4.9, SD = 1.6). These levels are consistent with the literature on the development of emotion understanding in typically developing children both in Russia (Veraksa et al., 2020, 2021, 2026; Bukhalenkova et al., 2022; Shatskaya et al., 2025; Chichinina et al., 2025; Guseva, 2025) and outside Russia (e.g., Tang et al., 2026 for a recent review). They are also in accordance with previous research showing that gender does not have an impact on children's emotion understanding (see introduction).

Analysis of variance with Gender (2) and Sample (2) as factors did not show a main effect of Gender and Sample and no significant interaction between the Gender X Sample on the Non-verbal Intelligence of children at Time 1. The children in both samples had a similar level of Non-verbal Intelligence regardless of their gender at Time 1 (Control: M = 12.9, SD = 6.9; Pandemic: M = 13.9, SD = 7.4). These levels are consistent with empirical findings on non-verbal intelligence in typically developing Russian girls and boys (Veraksa et al., 2022).

Did the lockdown affect the development of children's emotion understanding?

An analysis of variance with Gender (2), Sample (2) and Time (2) as factors and Non-verbal Intelligence as a covariate showed: (i) No significant interaction between Gender X Time, and Gender X Sample, (ii) no significant effect of Gender, the level of Emotion Understanding was the same in boys and girls irrespective of Sample and Time; (iii) a significant small/medium main effect of Time [F(1,668) = 17.2, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.03], the level of children's Emotion Understanding was lower at Time 1 (M = 4.9, SD = 1.5) than Time 2 (M = 5.5, SD = 1.3) irrespective of Gender and Sample; (iii) a significant small main effect of Non-verbal Intelligence [F(1,668) = 5.2, p = 0.023, η 2 = 0.01], the higher the level of Non-verbal Intelligence the higher the level of Emotion Understanding. These results are consistent with previous research showing that emotion understanding develops in preschool children between 5 and 7 years of age (see Introduction), that this development is similar in boys and girls (e.g., Fidalgo et al., 2018), and that non-verbal intelligence is one of its predictors (e.g., De Stasio et al., 2014).

The analysis of variance also showed (iv) a significant medium small/main effect of Sample [F(1,668) = 28.5, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.04], children in the Control sample had a higher level of Emotion understanding (M = 5.4, SD = 1.4) than children in the Pandemic sample (M = 5.0, SD = 1.4) (irrespective of Gender and Time) and (v) a significant small/medium interaction between Time X Sample [F(1,668) = 12.0, p < 0.001, η 2 = 0.02]: while children in the two samples had a similar level of Emotion Understanding at Time 1 (Control = 5,0, Pandemic = 4,9), children in the Control sample (M = 5.8, SD = 1.2) had significant higher level of Emotion Understanding [t(694) = 6.8, p <.001] than the children in the Pandemic sample (M = 5.1, SD = 1.3) at Time 2. The difference in Emotion Understanding between Time 1 and Time 2 was significantly larger [t(694) = 4.1, p < 0.001] in children from the Control sample (+ 0.8 points) than in children from the Pandemic sample (+ 0.2 points; see Figure 2). These results demonstrated for the first time that a six-month lockdown had a negative impact on the development of emotion understanding in young children.

A regression analysis was performed in which children's Emotion understanding at Time 2 was the dependent variable and Gender, Sample, Non-verbal intelligence, and Emotion understanding at Time 1 were the independent variables. The associations between these five variables were positive (Multiple R = 0.30) and significant [F(4, 668) = 16.7, p < 0.001]. 9.1% of the variance of children's emotion understanding at Time 2 was explained by the independent variables. Sample [β = 0.250, B = 0.651, 95% CI (0.84, 0.46), t = 6.7, p < 0.001] and Emotion understanding at Time 1 [β = 0.149, B = 0.129, 95% CI (0.07, 0.19), t = 4.0, p < 0.001] but not Gender nor Non-verbal intelligence had a significant effect on children's emotion understanding at Time 2. Sample alone explained 6.4% (partial r = 0.25), and Emotion understanding at Time 1 alone explained 2.3% (partial r = 0.15) of the variance of Emotion understanding at Time 2. These results replicate previous longitudinal findings showing that individual differences in children's emotion understanding are stable over at least a one-year period (Pons and Harris, 2005). They also corroborate the earlier analysis of variance, indicating that the lockdown accounted for the slowdown in the development of children's emotion understanding during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study is the first to examine empirically the potential association between a six-month COVID-19–related lockdown and the development of children's understanding of a wide range of emotion components (from the recognition of basic emotions and the understanding of the impact of external causes and desires on emotions, to the understanding of mixed and moral emotions and the possibility of regulating emotions with cognitive strategies, via the understanding of the impact of memories, desires, and hidden emotions) in urban, middle-class preschool children within a collectivist culture; specifically, contemporary Russia. Our objective was to determine whether such an association existed and, if so, whether it was positive or negative.

Did the lockdown affect children's emotion understanding development? The results showed a negative association between the lockdown and the development of emotion understanding in children over a one-year period, between the ages of 5.5 and 6.5 years. Although children in both the Control and Pandemic groups made developmental gains, improvement in the Control sample, which was consistent with existing cross-sectional and longitudinal literature, was substantially greater (+0.8 points) than in the Pandemic sample (+0.2 points), irrespective of their gender and level of non-verbal intelligence. This difference indicates that the lockdown might have slowed down the typical development of emotion understanding by a factor of four.

Why was the lockdown negatively associated with the development of emotion understanding? Research has shown that a virtuous circle exists between children's emotion understanding and their social interactions both within the nuclear family (parents, siblings, grandparents) and outside of it (with peers at school, in sports, and on playgrounds, etc.). The lockdown might have disrupted this virtuous circle by excluding one of its main “partners”; the social interactions outside the immediate family, while granting an almost total monopoly to the social interaction within the immediate family. By cutting off public spaces the lockdown restricted children's social interactions and the social and emotion experiences attached to them to almost entirely to their private sphere.

How might Russian children's emotion understanding development have been influenced by the imbalance in social interactions, marked by the dominance of the private sphere and the shrinkage of the public sphere? After all, children were not completely deprived of social contact; in fact, they spent significantly more time with their immediate families. The answer may be at least double.

Absence of social interactions outside the immediate family

First, the absence of public social interaction outside the immediate family as one of the main sources of emotion understanding could be a first answer. Previous studies highlighted the importance of peer-to-peer communication and interactions with other children outside the family for the development of emotional understanding in children (Laursen et al., 2001; Farris, 2000; Kyratzis and Guo, 2010; Comparini et al., 2014; Veraksa et al., 2020). Peer interactions encompass a wide range of situations, from joint play to conflicts, in which children can express themselves and receive immediate feedback from their peers. Research also showed that this type of interaction is more enriching and diverse from the perspective of children's expressions than any activity modeled by adults (Rubin et al., 2015; Dunn, 2005). During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, peer-to-peer communication and interpersonal interactions outside the family circle were severely restricted. Children, particularly those without siblings, went through long periods without peers to play, talk, or collaborate with. This prolonged limitation on peer communication, interaction, and social exchange may be one of the key factors behind the slowed development of emotional understanding observed in the pandemic sample. The imbalance in social interactions (shrinking of the public sphere) during the lockdown could potentially have a distinct impact on emotion understanding development within the collectivist context of Russian culture. In collectivist societies, socialization often emphasizes group cohesion, interdependence, reciprocity and conformity to collective norms. Consequently, the public sphere (e.g., preschools where children spent 60% of their weaking time) may serve as the primary sphere where young children practice decentring their individual desires, reading group emotional dynamics, and maintaining interpersonal harmony. When the lockdown confined children to the private sphere of the immediate family, it did not merely reduce their social interactions; it also might have isolated them from the very collective environments that are thought to play an important role in socializing their understanding of emotions. While the immediate family provides, when functional, high emotional warmth, it is an environment where the child's individual needs are naturally prioritized. Therefore, a reduction in the public sphere might have limited children's exposure to peer-based “collective” environments that are important for practicing the emotional restraint, empathy, and group-oriented decoding skills highly valued in a collectivistic culture such as the Russian society. Further empirical studies are needed to directly test this hypothesis about the differential impact of the lockdown as a function of culture.

Predominance of the social interactions within the immediate family

The limitation to family social interactions as one of the reasons of the slowdown in Russian children's emotion understanding development could be a second answer. In Russia, about 35% of families with children are mono-parental, roughly 50% raise only one child, and around two-third do not live in multi-generational homes with at least one grandparent (Federal State Statistics Service, 2023; Hogendoorn and Härkönen, 2023). The absence of social interactions outside the family could become even more critical when we consider the diversity of family environments. When social interaction occurs exclusively within the immediate family private sphere, its quality depends almost entirely on the family structure. In single-parent households, only-child families, families without grandparents, or dysfunctional homes, the risk of stagnation in the development of emotion understanding could be higher. Without siblings to negotiate with, a second parent or grandparent to observe, or an emotionally healthy environment to rely on, children in these isolated settings might have been deprived of the diverse social interactions they needed to build emotion understanding, such as exposure to a wide range of emotional experiences with others (including the emotional reactions they elicit in themselves), conversations about emotions, and emotional modeling. As a result, they might have been often exposed to a poorer social environment and, in some cases, to a toxic one. In the public sphere, such as playgrounds and preschools, children must actively decode subtle emotional cues, negotiate conflicts, and cooperate without adult scaffolding. Limiting a child's social world to the immediate family private sphere could have created a form of communicative redundancy. Because family members already know the child's habits, preferences, and cues intimately, they could unconsciously adapt to them, potentially reducing the child's need to actively read and interpret complex emotions. Consequently, while the family sphere offers vital emotional security, it does not replicate the diverse, unpredictable, and challenging emotional “training ground” provided by peer groups in public spaces. Research highlighted the role of the child-parent relationship and parental psychological wellbeing in the development of children's emotional understanding (Orgilés et al., 2020). Although caregivers attempted to engage children with various activities during the lockdowns, these efforts might have not compensate for the absence of preschool education, peer-to-peer communication, and interpersonal interaction outside the family (Kartushina et al., 2022). Furthermore, research indicated that parental psychological wellbeing deteriorated significantly during this period (Prime et al., 2020), as parents experienced heightened anxiety regarding their own health and their families' safety (Gaudreau et al., 2020). In turn, these elevated levels of pandemic- and lockdown-related parental stress were directly associated with more frequent emotional difficulties in children (Orgilés et al., 2020).

In summary, a possible explanation of the findings of this study is that the lockdown disrupted the virtuous circle between children's emotion understanding and their social interactions both within the immediate family (e.g., parents, siblings) and outside it (e.g., peers at preschool and on the playground, extended family, and other adults), resulting in an almost complete dominance of the former and a near disappearance of the latter. We hypothesize that social interactions beyond the immediate family play an important protective role in the development of emotion understanding as they provide rich and diverse social and emotional experiences, and that their prolonged absence may be particularly consequential in collectivistic societies where a major source of children's social and emotional experience, and thus of emotion understanding, is located outside their immediate family. In this view, restricting children's social interactions to their immediate family could constitute a risk factor for the development of emotion understanding because of the limitation of the richness and diversity of their social and emotional experiences. The prolonged dominance of such intra-familial interactions may be more consequential in collectivistic societies, where individuals rely more heavily on their extended family and local community for social and emotional experiences, and thus possibly for emotion understanding, as well as for socio-emotional support in times of adversity.

Limitations and prospects

This study is the first to empirically assess the association between an historical cultural event, such as long-lasting physical lockdown, and the development of emotion understanding in children. The results shed a new light on an under-investigated potential factor of emotion understanding development deeply tied to culture: history. However, this study has several limitations, which can be divided into two main categories: those related to the factors investigated, and those concerning the long-term follow-up and consequences of the lockdown. Addressing these limitations offers clear avenues for future research.

This study lacks empirical measures of individual family characteristics, most notably their actual cultural values and practices. The collectivistic values of the children and their families were inferred from existing research on Russian society; they were not measured directly at the family level. While Russian culture is broadly characterized as collectivistic, typical individual variations exist even among urban, middle-class, ethnic Russian populations. To empirically demonstrate that collective cultural values influence social interactions (and the impact of the absence of public social interactions) and, by extension, children's emotional understanding, future research must measure these collective values at the family level. Furthermore, the findings would be more compelling if a cross-cultural comparison were conducted in a highly individualistic society, such as the United States. Similarly, gathering empirical demographic measures of parental education levels, socioeconomic status (SES), ethnicity, and native language would be valuable. It would also be beneficial to track household structure, such as single- vs. two-parent homes, the number and age of siblings, and the presence of grandparents, as well as the children's attachment to their main caregiver and the specific types of joint activities parents and children shared during the lockdown. This data would allow researchers to test whether these micro-cultural characteristics influence children's social interactions within the family and therefore the development of their understanding of emotions as protective or risk factors. The study also lacks empirical measures of other key cultural values, such as hierarchical vs. egalitarian orientations or gender-differentiated vs. gender-neutral roles. Indeed, these cultural values could significantly influence the private social interactions within the family during a lockdown and by implication children's development of emotion understanding.

The results of this study showed that the lockdown was associated with a fourfold slowing of the development of emotional understanding; children in the pandemic sample exhibited a level of emotional understanding barely above that of children a full year younger. Because we were unfortunately unable to assess these children one or two years after T2, we do not know whether the pandemic sample eventually caught up with the control group. This question is inherently crucial: is the developmental delay accumulated during the pandemic irreversible, or is it a temporary lag? The answer to this question carries significant theoretical and applied implications.

Existing research demonstrated that children's emotional understanding significantly influences their psychological wellbeing, social competence, and academic achievement (see introduction). Because we were unable to measure these variables directly, it is difficult to determine the broader consequences of the observed developmental delay. It remains to be seen whether this cultural-historical lag is merely a benign epiphenomenon or a critical risk factor that must be addressed during future, similar crises.

Despite these limitations, the findings of this study are significant. They confirm the crucial role that public social interaction outside the family play in children's emotion understanding development. Unfortunately, there is no reason to assume that COVID-19 lockdown was a one-time historical event that will never be repeated. The results of this study can therefore be used to develop targeted interventions for children forced into for example strict isolation or extended hospital stays. As the authors of the concept “Growing up in the shadow of COVID-19” concluded, “The COVID-19 pandemic will eventually pass, but we must not let its shadows continue to define and affect a whole generation of young people” (The Lancet Child Adolescent Health, 2020a).