Home environment, nutritional status, and maternal intelligence as determinants of intellectual development in rural Philippine preschool children

Abstract

We investigated the relationship between home environment, nutritional status, and intellectual development in rural Philippine preschool children, using culture-relevant environment and intelligence scales and anthropometric measures of nutritional status. We found a moderate relationship between home environment and intellectual development. Intellectual malnourished range. Multiple regression analyses indicated that home environment variables provided more unique prediction of children's intelligence than did socioeconomic status (SES) and maternal intelligence, and that both the physical and psychosocial environment provided unique prediction. The relationship between home environment and intellectual development could not be accounted for entirely by maternal intelligence, a partial index of genetic influence. Results suggested the possibility of identifying environmental experiences related differentially to particular psychometric abilities (i.e., environmental specificity).