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Psychological Evidence Into the Effects of Day Care on Children's Cognitive and/or Social Development

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Psychological Evidence Into the Effects of Day Care on Children's Cognitive and/or Social Development Effects of day care on cognitive development - cognitive development is the changes that take place throughout (in this case) a child's life, referring to his/her mental abilities. This includes memory, perception, language and intelligence. The strong bond between caregiver and child promotes this development as it allows the child to go off and explore his/her surroundings and increase its opportunities for stimulation, using the caregiver as a secure base. There are several factors that could account to delays in this development. Firstly, Bowlby's theory of attachment proposed that a key…show more content…
This encouraged passivity and under-stimulation. However this may not always be the case. Some day care centres may be more stimulating than home, especially with children from disadvantaged backgrounds. So, where day care is stimulating and of a high quality than it can be very beneficial. To support this, Campbell et al. conducted a 20 year follow up study of children who had experienced day care. The findings were that children who had been in day care would gain higher on reading and maths tests than children who hadn't. In addition, Andersson's study in Sweden (a place with high quality day care) resulted in the findings that school performance was highest in children who had attended day care before the age of 1 and was lowest in those who had not attended day care at all. Another ongoing study, conducted in America, has followed over 1,300 children from birth through childhood. Reports are published at regular intervals and in 1997, it was reported that the higher the quality of child care in the first three years of life, the greater the child's language ability at 15, 24 and 36 months and greater general ability at ages 2 and 3. High quality care includes the amount of interaction between care-giver and infant. This means, that if this interaction is present in day care, then it will be greatly beneficial to the child. High quality care can prevent the drop in IQ that
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