Abstract
BackgroundThe quality of early caregiving experiences is a known contributor to the quality of the language experiences young children receive. What is unknown is whether, and if so, how psychosocial deprivation early in life is associated with long-lasting receptive language outcomes.MethodsTwo prospective longitudinal studies examining early psychosocial deprivation/neglect in different contexts (i.e., deprivation due to institutional care or deprivation experienced by children residing within US families) and receptive language as assessed via the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) were used to assess the magnitude of these associations. First, 129 participants from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, a randomized controlled trial of foster care as an alternative to institutional care in Romania, completed a receptive language assessment at age 18 years. Second, from the USA, 3342 participants from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study were assessed from infancy until middle childhood.ResultsChildren exposed to early institutional care, on average, had lower receptive language scores than their never institutionalized counterparts in late adolescence. While randomization to an early foster care intervention had no long-lasting association with PPVT scores, the duration of childhood exposure to institutional care was negatively associated with receptive language. Psychosocial deprivation in US families was also negatively associated with receptive language longitudinally, and this association remained statistically significant even after accounting for measures of socioeconomic status.ConclusionExperiences of psychosocial deprivation may have long-lasting consequences for receptive language ability, extending to age 18 years. Psychosocial deprivation is an important prospective predictor of poorer receptive language.Trial registrationBucharest Early Intervention Project ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00747396
Highlights
The quality of early caregiving experiences is a known contributor to the quality of the language experiences young children receive
Given that socioeconomic status (SES) has been linked to receptive language outcomes [56], in analyses from study 2 we examined the association of variation in early deprivation with receptive language ability after accounting for differences in SES
Among the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) sample, we find that variation in neglect is a prospective predictor of receptive language outcomes even after accounting for SES
Summary
The quality of early caregiving experiences is a known contributor to the quality of the language experiences young children receive. What is unknown is whether, and if so, how psychosocial deprivation early in life is associated with long-lasting receptive language outcomes. Children residing in institutional care as well as home-based settings can be characterized along a dimension of stimulation/psychosocial deprivation. The optimal development of receptive language skills in early childhood is associated with a cascade of numerous positive outcomes across childhood such as better-developed language production and reading skills and higher emotional competence [3, 23, 49]. Deficits in receptive language ability early in life have been associated with social difficulties in adolescence including poor friendship quality [16, 50]. Understanding factors associated with difficulties may help to identify those most at risk for poorer language and communication functioning, and social-emotional development
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