Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T01:15:05.271Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Effect of foster care on language learning at eight years: Findings from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2012

JENNIFER WINDSOR ,
ANA MORARU ,
CHARLES A. NELSON III ,
NATHAN A. FOX  and
CHARLES H. ZEANAH
JENNIFER WINDSOR*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
ANA MORARU
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
CHARLES A. NELSON III
Affiliation:
Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Boston
NATHAN A. FOX
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
CHARLES H. ZEANAH
Affiliation:
Tulane University Medical School
*
Address for correspondence: Jennifer Windsor, Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, 115 Shevlin Hall, University of Minnesota, 164 Pillsbury Drive S.E., Minneapolis, MN 55455. e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study reports on language outcomes at eight years from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, a randomized controlled study of foster care. We previously have shown that children placed in foster care by age two have substantially stronger preschool language outcomes than children placed later and children remaining in institutional care. One hundred and five children participated in the current study, fifty-four originally assigned to foster care and fifty-one to continued institutional care. Even though current placements varied, children originally in foster care had longer sentences and stronger sentence repetition and written word identification. Children placed in foster care by age two had significant advantages in word identification and nonword repetition; children placed by age 1 ; 3 performed equivalently to community peers. The results show the continuing adverse effects of early poor institutional care on later language development and the key importance of age of placement in a more optimal environment.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 40 , Issue 3 , June 2013 , pp. 605 - 627
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

The Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Early Experience and Brain Development (Charles A. Nelson, Network Chair). We are grateful to Hermi R. Woodward and the dedicated BEIP research staff. In particular, we thank Nicoletta Corlan, Erika Hoyt, Cornelia Iucha, Nadia Radu and Anca Radulescu for their assistance with task development and data collection.

References

REFERENCES

Behen, M., Helder, E., Rothermel, R., Solomon, K. & Chugani, H. T. (2008). Incidence of specific absolute neurocognitive impairment in globally intact children with histories of early severe deprivation. Child Neuropsychology 14, 453–69.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beverly, B. L., McGuinness, T. M. & Blanton, D. J. (2008). Communication and academic challenges in early adolescence for children who have been adopted from the former Soviet Union. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools 39, 303–313.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carroll, J. R., Davies, P. & Richman, B. (eds) 1971. The American Heritage word frequency book. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.Google Scholar
Chiat, S. & Roy, P. (2008). Early phonological and sociocognitive skills as predictors of later language and communication outcomes. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 49, 635–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Conti-Ramsden, G., Botting, N. & Faragher, B. (2001). Psycholinguistic markers for specific language impairment (SLI). Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 42, 741–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Croft, C., Beckett, C., Rutter, M., Castle, J., Colvert, E., Groothues, C., Hawkins, A., Kreppner, J., Stevens, S. & Sunuga-Barke, E. J. S. (2007). Early adolescent outcomes of institutionally deprived and non-deprived adoptees. II: Language as a protective factor and a vulnerable outcome. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 48, 31–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cummins, J. (1984). Bilingualism and special education: Issues in assessment and pedagogy. San Diego, CA: College Hill Press.Google Scholar
Devescovi, A. & Caselli, M. C. (2007). Sentence repetition as a measure of early grammatical development in Italian. International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders 42, 187–208.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Devescovi, A., Caselli, M. C., Marchione, D., Pasqualetti, P., Reilly, J. & Bates, E. (2005). A crosslinguistic study of the relationship between grammar and lexical development. Journal of Child Language 32, 759–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dinu, A. & Dinu, L. P. (2006). On the data base of Romanian syllables and some of its quantitative and cryptographic aspects. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, 1795–98. European Language Resources Association, Genoa, Italy.Google Scholar
Edwards, S., Fletcher, P., Garman, M., Hughes, A., Letts, C. & Sinka, I. (1997). The Reynell Developmental Language Scales III. Berkshire: Nfer-Nelson Publishing.Google Scholar
Fenson, L., Dale, P., Reznick, J., Bates, E., Thal, D. & Pethick, S. (1994). Variability in early communicative development. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Serial No. 242, 59(5).CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fox, N. A., Almas, A. N., Degnan, K. A., Nelson, C. A. & Zeanah, C. H. (2011). The effects of severe psychosocial deprivation and foster care intervention on cognitive development at 8 years of age: Findings from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 52, 919–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gathercole, S. E. & Baddeley, A. D. (1989). Evaluation of the role of phonological STM in the development of vocabulary in children. Journal of Memory and Language 28, 200–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glennen, S. (2007). Predicting language outcomes for internationally adopted children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 50. 529–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldfarb, W. (1945). Effects of psychological deprivation in infancy and subsequent stimulation. American Journal of Psychiatry 102, 18–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graf Estes, K., Evans, J. L. & Else-Quest, N. M. (2007). Differences in nonword repetition of children with and without language impairment: A meta-analysis. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 50, 177–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hakuta, K., Bialystok, E. & Wiley, E. (2003). Critical evidence: A test of the critical-period hypothesis for second language acquisition. Psychological Science 14, 31–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hunt, J. M., Mohandessi, K., Ghodssi, M. & Akiyama, M. (1976). The psychological development of orphanage-reared infants: Interventions with outcomes (Tehran). Genetic Psychology Monographs 94, 177–226.Google ScholarPubMed
Huttenlocher, J., Vasilyeva, M., Cymerman, E. & Levine, S. (2002). Language input and child syntax. Cognitive Psychology 45, 337–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Law, J., Garrett, Z. & Nye, C. (2004). The efficacy of treatment for children with developmental speech and language delay/disorder: A meta-analysis. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 47, 924–43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Loman, M. M., Wiik, K. L., Frenn, K. A., Pollak, S. D. & Gunnar, M. R. (2009). Postinstitutionalized children's development: Growth, cognitive, and language outcomes. Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics 30, 426–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, C. A., Zeanah, C. H., Fox, N. A., Marshall, P. J., Smyke, A. T. & Guthrie, D. (2007). Cognitive recovery in socially deprived young children: The Bucharest Early Intervention Project. Science 318, 1937–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Peisner-Feinberg, E. S., Burchinal, M. R., Clifford, R. M., Culkin, M. L., Howes, C., Kagan, S. L. & Yazejian, N. (2001). The relation of preschool child-care quality to children's cognitive and social developmental trajectories through second grade. Child Development 72, 1534–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Provence, S. & Lipton, R. C. (1962). Infants in institutions: A comparison of their development with family-reared infants during the first year of life. New York: International Universities Press.Google Scholar
Roy, P. & Rutter, M. (2006). Institutional care: Associations between inattention and early reading performance. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 47, 480–87.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rutter, M., Anderson-Wood, L., Beckett, C., Bredenkamp, D., Castle, J., Groothues, C., Kreppner, J., Keaveney, L., Lord, C. & O'Connor, T. G. (1999). Quasi-autistic patterns following severe early global privation. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 40, 537–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rutter, M. & the English and Romanian Adoptees (ERA) Study Team (1998). Developmental catch-up, and deficit, following adoption after severe global early privation. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 39, 465–76.Google ScholarPubMed
Scott, K. A., Roberts, J. A. & Krakow, R. (2008). Oral and written language development of children adopted from China. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 17, 150–60.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Semel, E., Wiig, E. H. & Secord, W. A. (2003). Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–4. San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation.Google Scholar
Snedeker, J., Geren, J. & Shafto, C. L. (2007). Starting over: International adoption as a natural experiment in language development. Psychological Science 18, 79–87.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stokes, S. F., Wong, A. M.-Y., Fletcher, P. & Leonard, L. B. (2006). Nonword repetition and sentence repetition as clinical markers of specific language impairment: The case of Cantonese. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49, 219–36.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tizard, B., Cooperman, O., Joseph, A. & Tizard, J. (1972). Environmental effects on language development: A study of young children in long-stay residential nurseries. Child Development 43, 337–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Werker, J. F. & Tees, R. C. (2005). Speech perception as a window for understanding plasticity and commitment in language systems in the brain. Developmental Psychobiology 46, 233–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Windsor, J., Benigno, J. P., Wing, C. A., Carroll, P. J., Koga, S. F., Nelson, C. A., Fox, N. A. & Zeanah, C. H. (2011). Effect of foster care on young children's language learning. Child Development 82, 1040–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Windsor, J., Glaze, L. E., Koga, S. F. & the Bucharest Early Intervention Project Core Group (2007). Language acquisition with limited input: Romanian institution and foster care. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 50, 1365–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Woodcock, R. W., McGrew, K. S. & Mater, N. (2001). Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities. Itasca, IL: Riverside Publishing.Google Scholar
Zeanah, C. H., Koga, S. F., Simian, B., Stanescu, A., Tabacaru, C. L., Fox, N. A., Nelson, C. A. & the Bucharest Early Intervention Core Group (2006). Response to commentary: Ethical dimensions of the BEIP. Infant Mental Health Journal 27, 581–83.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zeanah, C. H., Nelson, C. A., Fox, N. A., Smyke, A. T., Marshall, P., Parker, S. W. & Koga, S. (2003). Designing research to study the effects of institutionalization on brain and behavioral development: The Bucharest Early Intervention Project. Development and Psychopathology 15, 885–907.CrossRefGoogle Scholar