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In the Abecedarian Project, a prospective randomized trial, the effects of early educational intervention on patterns of cognitive and academic development among poor, minority children were examined. Participants in the follow-up were 104 of the original 111 participants in the study (98% African American). Early treatment was full-time, high-quality, educational child care from infancy to age 5. Cognitive test scores collected between the ages of 3 and 21 years and academic test scores from 8 to 21 years were analyzed. Treated children, on average, attained higher scores on both cognitive and academic tests, with moderate to large treatment effect sizes observed through age 21. Preschool cognitive gains accounted for a substantial portion of treatment differences in the development of reading and math skills. Intensive early childhood education can have long-lasting effects on cognitive and academic development.

In this prospective longitudinal study of 574 children followed from age 5 to age 21, the authors examine the links between early physical abuse and violent delinquency and other socially relevant outcomes during late adolescence or early adulthood and the extent to which the child's race and gender moderate these links. Analyses of covariance indicated that individuals who had been physically abused in the first 5 years of life were at greater risk for being arrested as juveniles for violent, nonviolent, and status offenses. Moreover, physically abused youth were less likely to have graduated from high school and more likely to have been fired in the past year, to have been a teen parent, and to have been pregnant or impregnated someone in the past year while not married. These effects were more pronounced for African American than for European American youth and somewhat more pronounced for females than for males.Keywords physical abuse; violence; delinquency; problem behavior; longitudinal Child maltreatment is an urgent public health problem for many reasons, not least of which concern the negative effects of early maltreatment on later social and psychological functioning. Of particular concern is the extent to which early physical abuse leads to later aggression and violence, that is, the extent to which "violence begets violence" (Widom, 1989). Although several studies have linked early maltreatment to later aggression and delinquency (e.g., Smith & Thornberry, 1995;Stouthamer-Loeber, Loeber, Homish, & Wei, 2001), the connection between early physical abuse and adolescent violence, per se, is less clear. In addition, much of the literature on the sequelae of early abuse is beset by methodological limitations such as the use of retrospective reports of childhood maltreatment and samples that confound maltreatment with experience in the child protective services system. In the present study, we use a prospective longitudinal design with a community sample in which abuse was measured through in-depth interviews to examine the links between early NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript physical abuse and violent delinquency and other socially relevant outcomes during late adolescence (at age 18) or early adulthood (at age 21). We also examine the extent to which the child's race and gender moderate these links. Early Physical Abuse and Later Aggression and DelinquencyImportant insight into the links between early physical abuse and later aggression and delinquency has come from a series of longitudinal studies drawing on 676 abused or neglected children, according to substantiated cases recorded from 1967 to 1971, and 520 matched control children drawn from birth records and school records (Widom, 1992(Widom, , 1998. All participants were interviewed between 1989 and 1995 when they were, on average, 29 years old. Participants who had been abused or neglected were 38% more likely than the matched controls to have been arrested for a violent crime (Wi...

Several dimensions of parent-child relationships were examined as predictors of adherence to treatment and metabolic control in a multi-informant study of 88 children and adolescents with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus who were recruited from 2 endocrinology clinics. Ratings of parent-child discipline, warmth, and behavioral support were not significantly associated with diabetes outcome, but parent-child conflict was a consistent correlate of both adherence and metabolic control. Within a public hospital subsample, conflict was related to parent, child, and nurse ratings of adherence and to a physiological index of metabolic control. These results were partially replicated in a private practice sample where conflict was significantly related to parents' ratings of adherence and to metabolic control. Conflict accounted for unique variance in diabetes outcome beyond that associated with other measures of the parent-child relationship, but the relation between conflict and metabolic control was no longer significant when adherence ratings were entered into regression equations first.

The authors found that children with specific patterns of psychopathology with and without conduct disorder were at risk of later criminality. Effective identification and treatment of children with such patterns may reduce later crime.