Coming from a disadvantaged background can have negative impact on an individual's educational trajectory. Some people however seem unaffected and cope well with the demands and challenges posed by school education, despite growing up in adverse conditions, a phenomenon termed "academic resilience." While it is uncertain which underlying…

Studies about gender difference in mental rotation ability are well documented in the context of developed countries; though not in developing or low-income ones. This paper examined students' mental rotation ability as a function of gender in a disadvantaged community in Indonesia. The Spatial Reasoning Instrument (SRI) was used to test 334…

Suor et al. (2017) present a compelling new evolutionary framework that offers an alternative interpretation of the well-established findings of cognitive deficits in children raised in harsh early environments. They argue that such findings do not convey a complete picture of those children's cognitive development, because children's cognition…

Harsh environments are known to predict deficits in children's cognitive abilities. Life history theory approaches challenge this interpretation, proposing stressed children's cognition becomes specialized to solve problems in fitness-enhancing ways. The goal of this study was to examine associations between early environmental harshness and…

Associations between early deprivation and memory functioning were examined in 9- to 11-year-old children. Children who had experienced prolonged institutional care prior to adoption were compared to children who were adopted early from foster care and children reared in birth families. Measures included the Paired Associates Learning task from…

The neurodevelopmental sequelae of early deprivation were examined by testing (N = 132) 8- and 9-year-old children who had endured prolonged versus brief institutionalized rearing or rearing in the natal family. Behavioral tasks included measures that permit inferences about underlying neural circuitry. Children raised in institutionalized…

Early-life stress (ES) has been associated with diverse forms of psychopathology. Some investigators suggest that these associations reflect the effects of stress on the neural circuits that support cognitive control. However, very few prior studies have examined the associations between ES, cognitive control, and underlying neural architecture.…

Whereas metaanalyses of cross-sectional adoption studies have indicated that there is an impact of early deprivation on adoptee's cognitive ability, these effects generally diminish markedly after upbringing in adoptive homes. Outcomes in terms of scholastic attainment were not quite so positive in a cross-sectional metaanalysis, but the Swedish…

Background: There is uncertainty about the extent to which language skills are part of general intelligence and even more uncertainty on whether deprivation has differential effects on language and non-language skills. Methods: Language and cognitive outcomes at 6 and 11 years of age were compared between a sample of 132 institution-reared…

Hypothesizes that a child's realization of genetic potential for intellectual development depends on socioeconomic environment. Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test results were examined for a large sibling sample of African American and White adolescents from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. When SES factors were considered…

This book aims: (1) to describe and evaluate psychological research on poor children's intellect; to this end, the following questions are dealt with: What is the nature of poor children's mental abilities? How do these abilities develop? (2) to analyze the psychological assumptions underlying several attempts to reform education; and, (3) to…

A STUDY WAS CONDUCTED TO DETERMINE THE COGNITIVE, AFFECTIVE, MOTIVATIONAL, AND PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGH-ACHIEVING STUDENTS FROM A DEPRIVED ENVIRONMENT. THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE STUDENT'S SEX TO HIS ACHIEVEMENT STATUS WAS ALSO ASSESSED. THE SUBJECTS, 160 10-YEAR-OLD FIFTH-GRADE NEGRO CHILDREN, WERE DIVIDED INTO LOW-ACHIEVING AND…

The principal aims of this study were to identify, select, analyze, and describe educational programs for culturally disadvantaged children from preschool through grade 12 which had yielded measured benefits of cognitive achievement. A literature search (mainly through ERIC) and mail inquiries followed by telephone consultations constituted the…