At a leagăne in the Romanian city of Iași, a child-development specialist named Joseph Sparling had organized a yearlong early-enrichment program for a group of infants, sparing them from the severe neglect and sensory deprivation typical of care in these institutions. The child-to-caregiver ratio for the children in the program was four to one, compared with the institutional standard of twenty to one. Carlson and Earls measured the cortisol levels of the enriched children, as well as of children in a control group. They took saliva samples multiple times a day, tracking how cortisol levels fluctuated over time and in response to stressful events. The levels of the children in the control group, they found, were off kilter, while the levels of the enriched children were more like those of Romanian children who had been home-reared. Cortisol in children who are home-reared tends to peak just before they wake up and then taper off; in the leagăne infants of the control group, cortisol peaked in the afternoon and remained elevated. That pattern, in turn, correlated with lower performance on numerous cognitive and physical assessments. By contrast, the children in Sparling’s enrichment program, who were receiving higher-quality care and more attention, performed better both physically and behaviorally.In 1997, Carlson and Earls published their results. “The implications for the cognitive and social development of future generations of adults in this society are potentially serious when one considers that most Romanian children spend significant amounts of time in some form of institutional setting,” they wrote. In a subsequent interview, Carlson said of the study, “When the enriched kids returned to the typical conditions that involved little touching, the physical and behavioral advantage they had obtained faded. Although the enriched group showed a better response to stress as long as eighteen months later, they still were socially withdrawn and failed to respond normally to other children and adults.”
đang được dịch, vui lòng đợi..