Early intervention: A model for developmental research?

Abstract

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1981, p. 686) defines intervention as follows: To enter or occur extraneously. From the Random House Dictionary of the English Language (1984, p. 999) we have coming between; to occur (incidentally) so as to modify or hinder; to occur or happen between other events or periods; to intercede. An intervention, then, is a time-bound event, coming between two other identifiable events or points in time. It is superimposed upon the ongoing stream of life and development. It is something which would not occur under the normal or expected course of events, and it may be fortunate or unfortunate, deliberate or accidental. In the more restricted sense with which we are concerned in this symposium, intervention refers, of course, to the deliberate imposition of specific experiences into the lives of children-it is referred to as intervention if it occurs somewhere between birth and middle childhood. Clearly, early intervention is not synonymous with early education or preschool education, although these terms have become linked in the minds of many-perhaps because over the last 20 years or so most early intervention studies with humans have involved education, either directly in the form of instruction of children, or indirectly by education of mothers of young children. It is not my purpose here to review such studies or to summarize the information gained from them. Rather, I shall try to examine the intervention study as a research tool. As a tool of applied research intervention may be done either to prevent undesirable events from occurring or to produce desirable effects which have not previously existed. At a corner at which many accidents are occurring, for example, an engineer