The Effects of Global Severe Privation on Cognitive Competence: Extension and Longitudinal Follow‐up

O’Connor, Thomas G.; Rutter, Michael; Beckett, Celia; Keaveney, Lisa; Kreppner, Jana

doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00151

Cited by 301 publications

(243 citation statements)

References 40 publications

(41 reference statements)

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“…Some parents may do so because their children may be of Asian or mixed-race descent. Children from Russia or Eastern Europe also are known to be at greater risk for developmental delay because of early childhood deprivation (O'Connor et al, 2000), and parents may seek to address these concerns with teachers. This is the first study to our knowledge to test a mediation model of cultural socialization that incorporates parental attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural socialization in families with internationally adopted children.

Lee¹,

Grotevant²,

Hellerstedt³

et al. 2006

Journal of Family Psychology

155

195

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Cultural socialization attitudes, beliefs, and parenting behaviors were examined in families with internationally adopted children. The authors hypothesized that parents with lower color-blind racial attitudes would be more likely to engage in enculturation and racialization parenting behaviors because they hold stronger beliefs in the value and importance of cultural socialization. Using data from the Minnesota International Adoption Project, the results support this mediation model of cultural socialization. Individual variations in cultural socialization also are discussed in terms of child development and shifting adoption attitudes and practices.Keywords cultural socialization; international adoption; parenting; racial attitudes; transracial International adoption is becoming an increasingly popular means to form a family in the United States. Since 1971, over 330,000 children have been adopted from other countries, and there has been a threefold increase in the annual rate of international adoption, from 7,093 children in 1990 to 22,884 children in 2004 (U.S. Department of State, 2005). The increase in international adoption is attributed to war, poverty, and the lack of social welfare in sending countries and, in the United States, to increased infertility rates, perceived difficulties associated with domestic adoption, preference to adopt infants rather than older children, and a disinclination toward foster care adoption (R. M. Lee, 2003). Today, children-mostly infants and toddlers-are adopted annually from over 100 countries, with approximately 90% of children adopted from just 20 countries and the majority from China, Russia, South Korea, and Guatemala.International adoption also reflects a larger, growing trend toward multiracial and multiethnic families, who face unique challenges in the upbringing of children of different ethnic and racial heritages. Research suggests that same-race and transracially adopted children begin to become aware of racial differences, as well as their adoptive status, as early as 4-5 years of age (Brodzinsky, Singer, & Braff, 1984;Huh & Reid, 2000). As transracial adoptees grow older, Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Richard M. Lee Lee & Quintana, 2005). At the same time, they may begin to experience feelings of loss of birth culture and family history and the growing awareness of racism and discrimination in their everyday lives (Meier, 1999;Powell & Affi, 2005). This feeling of loss, in turn, has been found to be associated with greater depressive symptoms and lower self-worth among domestically and internationally adopted preadolescents (Smith & Brodzinsky, 2002). Similarly, Cederblad, Höök, Irhammer, and Mercke (1999) reported that uncertainty about one's ethnic identity and perceived discrimination are related to greater psychological distress and lower self-esteem among international adoptees. Adoptive parents, most of whom are White and of European descent, likewise are confronted with decisions about when and how to appropri...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural socialization in families with internationally adopted children.

Lee¹,

Grotevant²,

Hellerstedt³

et al. 2006

Journal of Family Psychology

155

195

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…In addition, institutional care tends to be strictly regimented (Ames, 1990), allowing children few opportunities to learn that their actions produce reliable and consistent consequences. Such environmental contingencies are understood and used by even very young infants (Rovee-Collier & Capatides, 1979).The possibility that developmental processes are affected by children's early experiences is further supported by observations that persistent socioemotional problems tend to correlate with the duration of institutional care (e.g., Ames, 1997;O'Connor et al, 2000) and with the degree of preadoption privation (Verhulst, Althaus, & Versluis den Bieman 1990. For example, clinically significant behavior problems such as aggression tend to correlate with health problems at adoption associated with neglect and with parent report of preadoption neglect (Verhulst et al, 1992).…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

“…The possibility that developmental processes are affected by children's early experiences is further supported by observations that persistent socioemotional problems tend to correlate with the duration of institutional care (e.g., Ames, 1997;O'Connor et al, 2000) and with the degree of preadoption privation (Verhulst, Althaus, & Versluis den Bieman 1990. For example, clinically significant behavior problems such as aggression tend to correlate with health problems at adoption associated with neglect and with parent report of preadoption neglect (Verhulst et al, 1992).…”

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confidence: 97%

Emotion understanding in postinstitutionalized Eastern European children

Fries

Pollak

2004

Develop. Psychopathol.

131

121

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To examine the effects of early emotional neglect on children's affective development, we assessed children who had experienced institutionalized care prior to adoption into family environments. One task required children to identify photographs of facial expressions of emotion. A second task required children to match facial expressions to an emotional situation. Internationally adopted, postinstitutionalized children had difficulty identifying facial expressions of emotion. In addition, postinstitutionalized children had significant difficulty matching appropriate facial expressions to happy, sad, and fearful scenarios. However, postinstitutionalized children performed as well as comparison children when asked to identify and match angry facial expressions. These results are discussed in terms of the importance of emotional input early in life on later developmental organization.Over the last decade, the adoption of children across nations has increased substantially. In the United States alone, such adoptions now exceed 20,000 children per year (Immigration and Naturalization Service [INS], 2002). Today, approximately 85% of international adoptees have spent some or all of their lives in institutional, as opposed to family, care where the children have experienced combinations of physical and social deprivation (US State Department, 1999). Although the deprivation experienced by these children is often impossible to precisely quantify, it is apparent that these environments fall below the quality needed to sustain normal behavioral development, as evidenced by the rate at which children arrive in their adoptive homes with poor health, growth failure, and developmental delays (Johnson, 2000a;Johnson, Miller, Iverson, Thomas, Franchino, Dole, Kiernan, Georgieff, & Hostetter, 1992;Miller, 2000). Current estimates are that institutionalized infants and toddlers loose about 1 month of linear growth for every 3 months in institutional care, with behavioral development exhibiting similar dramatic reductions (Gunnar, 2001;Johnson, 2000b).Institutionally reared children have captured attention for decades. Early research on these children emphasized the deprivation of maternal care, although as Rutter (1981) rightly noted, not only maternal stimulation, but also many other types of stimulation needed for normal development is deficient in institutional environments. Thus, the study of these children addresses both basic science issues about the role of early experience on brain development and also applied issues about the kinds of interventions that are likely to support and foster optimal development for these children. Indeed, early studies revealed that postinstitutionalized (PI) children showed marked improvements when removed from orphanage settings and placed in family environments; nonetheless, persistent developmental differences in these children could be detected long after adoption, including deficits in emotional and social development (Fisher, Ames, Chisholm, & Savoie, 1997;Hodges & Tizard, 1989...

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“…At this point in time, it is unclear which approach (or combination of approaches) is most likely to be effective in promoting EF skills, in particular, and school readiness, more broadly. Both warrant further exploration and study.Targeting social-emotional learning environments-Prior research has documented links between exposure to highly stressful early environments and delays in EF development (Cicchetti, 2002;Lengua et al, 2007;O'Connor, Rutter, Beckett, et al, 2000), possibly because of the impact of early stress on developing neuroendocrine responsiveness and stress reactivity (Pollack, Cicchetti, & Klorman, 1998;Sanchez, Ladd, & Plotsky, 2001). Similarly, developmental researchers have hypothesized that the delays in EF development associated with growing up in poverty may have their roots in early socialemotional experiences, specifically in low rates of sensitive-responsive caregiving that reduce the child's exposure to opportunities for sustained joint attention, language input, and effective scaffolding of early emotion regulation (Goldsmith & Rogoff, 1997;Lengua et al, 2007).…”

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confidence: 99%

Executive functions and school readiness intervention: Impact, moderation, and mediation in the Head Start REDI program

et al. 2008

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Despite their potentially central role in fostering school readiness, executive function (EF) skills have received little explicit attention in the design and evaluation of school readiness interventions for socioeconomically disadvantaged children. The present study examined a set of five EF measures in the context of a randomized-controlled trial of a research-based intervention integrated into Head Start programs (Head Start REDI). Three hundred fifty-six 4-year-old children (17% Hispanic, 25% African American; 54% girls) were followed over the course of the prekindergarten year. Initial EF predicted gains in cognitive and social-emotional skills and moderated the impact of the Head Start REDI intervention on some outcomes. The REDI intervention promoted gains on two EF measures, which partially mediated intervention effects on school readiness. We discuss the importance of further study of the neurobiological bases of school readiness, the implications for intervention design, and the value of incorporating markers of neurobiological processes into school readiness interventions.Growing up in poverty significantly increases the likelihood that children will start school well behind their advantaged peers in key areas of language development and emergent literacy skills (Zill et al., 2003). Perhaps even more critically, many will start school without the social-emotional maturity and classroom behaviors that foster "readiness to learn," impeding their rate of progress once in school, and contributing to gaping disparities in school performance, high school graduation rates, and long-term employment potential (Campbell & von Stauffenberg, 2008;McClelland, Acock, & Morrison, 2006;Ryan, Fauth, & Brooks-Gunn, 2006). Rates of child poverty are on the rise in the United States, now affecting nearly one out of five children (Children's Defense Fund, 2005), making the problem of understanding and promoting school readiness a national priority.Recent efforts to promote school readiness for children growing up in poverty have focused on improving the instructional content of preschool programs, particularly Head Start programs, to enhance children's acquisition of key emergent literacy skills (such as letter identification and phonemic sensitivity) that are strong predictors of later achievement (Lonigan, Burgess, & Anthony, 2000). Although important, instructional strategies that focus narrowly on promoting the memorization of discrete content may "miss the mark" developmentally. The long-term impact of preschool interventions may depend on the degree to which they foster the development of mental systems that support learning and adaptive learning behaviors (Blair, 2002). For this reason, the Committee on Integrating the Science of Early Childhood Development (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000) and others have underscored the importance of promoting self-regulation and social competence in preschool Copyright ©2008 Cambridge University Press Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Karen Bierman, Pennsylvania ...

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The Effects of Global Severe Privation on Cognitive Competence: Extension and Longitudinal Follow‐up

Cited by 301 publications

References 40 publications

Cultural socialization in families with internationally adopted children.

Cultural socialization in families with internationally adopted children.

Emotion understanding in postinstitutionalized Eastern European children

Executive functions and school readiness intervention: Impact, moderation, and mediation in the Head Start REDI program

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