Exposure to early psychosocial deprivation as a result of institutional care disrupts typical brain development. The Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) is the first longitudinal study to investigate the neurodevelopment of institutionalized infants randomized to a foster care (FCG) intervention versus care as usual (CAUG). Here, we…

Forced displacement worldwide is at its highest in decades and millions of young children are living in conflict zones, in transitional or enduring refugee contexts, and in demographically diverse marginalized and informal settlements. There is a huge unmet need for delivering early childhood development interventions to ensure the safety and…

This article examines two teachers' discourses of literacy as social practice in advantaged and disadvantaged early childhood centres for three- to four-year-olds. The intention is to make sense of the dominant discourse of literacy, its constitutive nature and its effects on children, teaching and learning. Foucault's theory of discourse is used…

Learning ought to be supported by both in class activities and outdoor activities contributing to structuring knowledge. Outdoor activities allow children to actively participate and to learn by doing. Learning requires a lot of work and activities. These activities, which provide primary experiences, help children to change theoretical knowledge…

A combination of policy changes and wider socio-economic trends led to a dramatic increase in child poverty in New Zealand during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Higher rates of child poverty have now become embedded in the system and show little sign of resolving themselves. For a country which once took pride in being comparatively egalitarian…

Early childhood education has received attention from philosophers, educationists and psycho-analysts such as Plato, Avicenna, Locke, Pestalozzi, Whitehead, Carl Jung, Binet, Piaget, Montessori, Sigmund Freund, Howard Gardner, among others. In Africa, the backdrop of poverty, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in strife-torn countries, among…

Family environment plays a very important role in early child development and the availability of stimulating material in the early years of a child's life is crucial for optimising development. The Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) inventory is one of the most widely used measures to assess the quality and quantity of…

Background: Early childhood malnutrition is associated with cognitive and behavioral impairment during childhood and adolescence, but studies in adulthood are limited. Methods: Using the NEO-PI-R personality inventory, we compared personality profiles at 37-43 years of age ("M" 40.3 years, "SD" 1.9) of Barbadian adults who had…

This study examined classifications of attachment in 42-month-old Romanian children (N = 169). Institutionalized since birth, children were assessed comprehensively, randomly assigned to care as usual (CAU) or to foster care, and compared to family-reared children. Attachment classifications for children in foster care were markedly different from…

Background: Previous reports from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project suggested that children removed from institutions and placed into intervention displayed gains in IQ relative to children randomized to remain in institutional care. Method: The current report presents data from the 8-year follow-up of these children. One hundred and three…

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). After describing the structure of this monograph, this chapter provides the background as it applied at the time that the…

It has come to be generally accepted that the psychopathological effects of psychosocial stress and adversity are diagnostically nonspecific. There is a good deal of supporting evidence in support of this assumption, even though it may be that the nonspecificity has been exaggerated through a failure to take account of comorbidity. This chapter…

The authors' previous work and the data reported in the preceding chapters of this monograph provide conclusive evidence of the persistent nature of the negative impact of early severe deprivation. Institutional deprivation, despite the good outcomes for many, was often associated with substantial impairment and disorder across a wide range of…

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 development of conduct and emotional problems involves a complex interplay between environmental and genetic factors. The child-rearing environment contributes to this process. Gross deviations, such as those seen in abusive or neglectful homes, or where the parent has serious mental health problems, have been shown to contribute to the…