A sample of 77 adopted children from China and a matched sample of 77 Norwegian-born children were tested for educational achievement. The results did not show any significant differences between the two groups either in educational performance or in any other related areas. The findings are in contrast to other studies showing that international adoptees as a group have lower performance than non-adoptees. The study did show a greater disparity within the adopted group's performance compared to the Norwegian-born group. Similar results have been found in other studies in this field. Adopted children's academic language skills and the level of hyperactive behavior explained most of the disparity in their educational performance. Age of adoption did not have an effect on adopted children's educational performance, their language skills or problem behavior.
Negative pre-adoption circumstances may have persistent influences on cognitive development. The prognosis from a cognitive perspective may still be good regardless of age at adoption if the quality of care before adoption has been 'good enough' and the adoption selection mechanisms do not reflect an overrepresentation of risk factors - both requirements probably fulfilled in South Korea.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.