Exposure to childhood adversity has been consistently associated with poor developmental outcomes, but it is unclear whether these associations vary across different forms of adversity. We examined cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between threat and deprivation with cognition, emotional processing, and psychopathology in a…

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…

Over the last 20 years, we have learned much about the extent to which early-life deprivation affects the mental health of children and adolescents. This body of evidence comes predominantly from studies of children raised in institutional care. The Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) is the only randomized controlled trial designed to…

This paper presents an overview of some of Michael Cole's work, starting with his pioneering research in Liberia with the Kpelle (and later, with Sylvia Scribner, studies of literacy with the Vai, 1981), which was formative of his version of a cultural-historical psychology, his translation and interpretations of the work of L. S. Vygotsky 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…

Effects of dual-responding on tracking performance after 49-h of sleep deprivation (SD) were evaluated behaviorally and with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Continuous visuomotor tracking was performed simultaneously with an intermittent color-matching visual detection task in which a pair of color-matched stimuli constituted a…

Background: Previous studies have found that post-institutionalized (PI) children are particularly susceptible to attention problems and perform poorly on executive functioning (EF) lab tasks. Methods: Parent ratings of EF were examined in 288 school-age and 130 preschool-age children adopted from psychosocially depriving Russian institutions that…

While effects of institutional care on behavioral development have been studied extensively, effects on neural systems underlying these socioemotional and attention deficits are only beginning to be examined. The current study assessed electroencephalogram (EEG) power in 18-month-old internationally adopted, postinstitutionalized children (n = 37)…

This monograph is concerned with the mid adolescent follow-up of a group of adoptees from Romania and from within the United Kingdom who were first assessed at the age of 4 years (or 6 years in the case of the oldest children). Chapter I provides the background as it applied at the time that the study began, and then goes on to outline the overall…

The adoption into the UK of children who have been reared in severely deprived conditions provides an opportunity to study possible association between very early negative experiences and subsequent brain development. This cross-sectional study was a pilot for a planned larger study quantifying the effects of early deprivation on later brain…

Theory of Mind (ToM) and Executive Function (EF) have been associated with autism and with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and hence might play a role in similar syndromes found following profound early institutional deprivation. In order to examine this possibility the current study included a group of 165 Romanian adoptees, of…

When mental health clinicians perform mental status examinations, they examine the language patterns of patients because abnormal language patterns, sometimes referred to as language dysfluency, may indicate a thought disorder. Performing such examinations with deaf patients is a far more complex task, especially with traditionally underserved…

Piaget's notions about schema retention were examined using a sample of 384 disadvantaged four, five, and six year old children from a wide geographical area. The purpose was to examine the idea that schemas may be destroyed or modified by specific methods of interference using a retroactive inhibition model. Pictorial scenes were generated and…

Features of compensatory education programs which have been effective with low-achieving, socially and economically disadvantaged students are delineated. Analyzed are the effects of: (1) changing classroom organization; (2) varying instructional methods; and (3) concentration on developing children's learning processes. Policy recommendations are…

Used observations and home visits to examine sex differences in language ability of 54 disadvantaged children at risk for poor language outcomes. Found that language difficulties increased over time, boys were at a constant disadvantage to girls in language development, and sex difference in language ability appeared even when families had similar…