In April of 2020, the Royal Society of Canada spearheaded an initiative to form the RSC Task Force on COVID-19, a group of experts willing to give evidence-informed perspectives on the impacts that COVID-19 could have on various aspects of society. Dr. Janet F. Werker and Dr. Haykaz Mangardich, the director and a postdoctoral fellow at the Infant Studies Centre respectively, both joined this team in order to help assess the impacts specifically on language and literacy in Canada. As we know that the process of understanding language and using it to communicate is a hugely important milestone in a baby’s life, the information put together by this task force will be able to help policy makers in the future make informed decisions about this field and how it has changed due to the current pandemic.
The essays that resulted from this collaborative effort have recently been released by the Royal Society of Canada to the public. If you would like to read the full report, it can be accessed here. A shortened executive summary is also available here.