Children Can Recover From Cognitive Impairment Following Severe Early Deprivation Essay

In this research they took out a longitudinal study. They studied 65 children which were placed in an institution when less than four months, which had all experienced early privation. By 4 years old, 24 children had been adopted, 15 returned to their natural homes and the rest remained in the institution. It was found that the adopted children had closer attachments to their parents and had good family relationships and this was not the case for the ‘restored’ children.

Childhood poverty comes along with stress and safety. Children who grow up in low-income families have less interaction with their families which leads to less cognitive stimulation. They also don’t have access to healthy foods, which affect healthy brain development. According to Hanson JL, Hair N, Shen DG, Shi F, Gilmore JH, et al., infants, toddlers and preschoolers from low-income families develop lower gray matter compared with those from middle and high-income households (Hanson et al.,2013).

To start, little is actually known about the importance and effect of timing of poverty on children’s psychological development. Economic deprivation during different phases and time frames of childhood can also alter the outcome of the child. Studies that have been done about children's early cognitive and physical development suggest that family income in the first five years of life has the most

“Several recent US studies have demonstrated improvements in children's IQ's by improving the lives of infants in disadvantaged circumstances.” www.wilderdom.com

Poverty affects the health of a child, which undesirably impacts the development process. Scientist have ran many tests to support the argument that poverty does effect a child’s brain development. Seth Pollak, a child development researcher, and his team analyzed nearly 1000 MRI scans of rather diverse children from all over the U.S between 2001 and 2007. Making sure to exclude individuals who were born from risky pregnancies, complicated births and subjects who had a family history of mental illness. The MRI scans revealed that the areas of the brain that were affected by environmental influences and academic

A child’s intellectual development can vary greatly and is usually dependent on what opportunities they have been given and on different experiences they see or actively participate.

Early childhood. During the 1990s, the nation was inundated with reports on the importance of the early years on children's brain development and later cognitive achievement. While some of the reports may have overstated the issue and understated the importance of a child's later years on development, evidence suggests that the early years may be a critical period of development in which family poverty has particularly strong effects on young children. As seen in Table 1, poverty occurring early in a child's life (age two to four) is associated with large effects on indices of child school readiness and cognitive outcomes.

Jennifer Windsor, Leslie E. Glaze, & Sebastian F. Koga write in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research an articled titled “Language Acquisition with Limited Input: Romanian Institution and Foster Care”. From the Abstract, the purpose of the article is to give detailed information on the development of language abilities on children who have been “institutionalized” (2007, p. 1365). Their participants were grouped into three categories: children growing up in an orphanage, children growing up in foster care (only for one year), and their control group consisted of children growing up in their biologically natural environments (2007, p. 1365). Their research method was performed using an experimental procedure type in which they compared the language development of children from institutions to that of children from biological settings. According to the abstract, the conclusion of this research is that children who spent time in foster care showed improved language abilities than children who were institutionalized (i.e., those who were not in foster care) (p. 1365).

On the other hand, based on what I learned about brain development in Chapter 5, it is best to initiate intervention for poverty–stricken children in the first two years rather than later because a child 's brain develops dramatically. This is when the brain’s neural fiber synapses produces like no other, “because developing neurons require space for these connective structures, a surprising aspect of brain growth is that as synapses form, many surroundings neurons die-20 to 80 percent, depending on the brain region… neural tube produces far more neurons than the brain will ever need” (Berks & Meyers, 2016, pg. 162). This is when all the important brain regions with specific

As this period is considered to be the most integral developmental stage of life, the impact of social, environmental, and economic determinants can have long lasting, if not permanent effects (World Health Organization (WHO), 2015) . Children who in early life are subjected to adversities, such as poverty, inappropriate care, maltreatment, inadequate health care, or substandard education, are more likely to suffer difficulties later in life (Hertzman, 2013).

The limitations of this study is that they do not have much physical evidence of the effects of the brain. The author of the article does mention this however the researcher does provide brain scans showing how the brain function changes. By looking beyond cognitive skills tests towards the physical effects of poverty on the brain, it will make the study more credible.

This paper explores the numerous effects neglect has on a child's development. If a child lacks the necessary attachment and stimulation during the critical first years, they will have profound developmental issues throughout life. Possibly the most important aspects that are affected by neglect are the brain and a child's social development. Looking into the case of the Romanian orphans, readers will be able to see the harsh consequences. Severe neglect is child abuse that often goes unnoticed and is hard to reverse. By understanding the implications of neglect, we can intervene earlier in order to prevent severe cases from becoming irrevocable.

The environment that a child is exposed to is very influential, as a high-quality living environment has been positively linked to cognitive development (Guo & Harris, 2000). Therefore those children living in poverty are at a further disadvantage due to their low-quality living environment.

It is well know that foster Children have a very hard time finding a permanent home and adjusting to their new home. The majority of foster children go through this process of finding a home at a very young age. For most of these children it occurs during very young age which is the most important time for develop mental processes. Therefore foster children are at risk of cognitive and social- emotional development delays. (Jacobson et. al 2013). As mentioned in the article “research has underscored the importance of early, nurturing caregiver environments on brain development, and the importance of positive brain-environment interaction during the first 2 years of life has also been documented by research on foster care and adoption”(Jacobson et. al 2013). The article currently looks at, specifically the issue of foster children’s cognitive development and social- emotional functioning specifically of children ages between 2 to 3 years of age. There has been previous research done on this article. A research done to look at this issue was one done in Romanian were 136 institutionalized children were randomly selected. These children were selected to continue to be institutionalized or placed in foster care. In this study, the foster parents were selected and trained,

The results from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) also indicated that children removed from institutions and placed in foster care displayed higher IQ scores compared to children who remained in institutions and that those removed prior to 24 months showed sustained but not robust gains in IQ (Fox, Almas, Degna, Nelson, & Zeanah, 2011). Dennis (1973) and Kagan (1979) suggested a similar sensitive period, after which the effects of institutional deprivation would be irreversible. However, in the BEIP study there were no children who were less than 6 months of age at the time of placement into foster case. Therefore, the timing (age) of intervention cannot directly be compared between these studies. However, there may be different sensitive