The overarching goal of the project is to understand the impact of early deprivation, concurrently and prospectively, on the development of a child.
Researchers have previously investigated the associations between individual differences in early care and adult outcomes. And, in fact, it has been shown indisputably that the quality of early care is tightly connected to corresponding offspring developmental outcomes. Generally speaking, high-quality early care is associated with a range of positive outcomes, and low-quality early care with a host of negative outcomes. Correspondingly, early deprivation of parental care—when the quality of early care is severely challenged by negative environmental or situational factors—places children at elevated risk for maladaptive physical- and mental-health outcomes in adolescence and adulthood. Specifically, early deprivation has been strongly associated with poor physical-health outcomes such as lung disease, peptic ulcers, arthritic disorders, diabetes, and autoimmune disorders, as well as cardiovascular malfunctioning and problematic mental-health outcomes such as depression, anxiety, psychosis, aggression, drug abuse, child abuse, and homicides. Clearly, understanding the connection between early neglect and long-term outcomes is an important public-health challenge.
Both human and non-human studies, separately and in combination, have contributed to the field’s growing understanding of the neurological substrates and consequences of early neglect. Research among non-human species provides evidence of the pernicious effects of maternal deprivation on infant development. Behaviorally, maternal deprivation has been associated with marked deficits in the offspring’s play behavior, high levels of social aggression, deficient cognitive functioning and learning, impaired social behaviors, increased emotional reactivity to novelty, and harmful and abusive parenting behaviors.
Whereas such deficits cannot be studied experimentally (i.e., manifested through experimental manipulations) among human young, adverse early experience, such as seen in institutional care and parental neglect, suggest similar effects. Children who have experienced early institutional care show the most pervasive negative outcomes. Such children are often delayed in physical growth, show deficits in motor development and extensive delays in cognitive functioning and language development. In addition to developmental delays, institutionalized children often show highly anomalous behaviors, including stereotypies such as rocking, self-stimulating, and quasi-autistic behaviors. Their social behaviors are odd and often classified into one of two extremes— withdrawn and depressed in appearance, or indiscriminate in their attachment behaviors. Even high quality institutional care has deleterious effects on young children’s development. In general, children are not given the opportunity to develop selective attachment relationships to caregivers in institutions. A number of factors operate to make caring for children in institutions perfunctory. Institutional care seems to have specific adverse effects on children that other depriving conditions do not.
Yet, both human and non-human studies suggest that there is rapid catch-up in physical and cognitive development following placement in enriched environments after even severe deprivation. Thus, adoptive placement in itself appears to represent a significant intervention with regard to physical and cognitive development catch-up, although problems persist among some children years after placement into adoptive homes. The advantage of FC vs. IC is not so clear and needs to be carefully investigated.
In this context, the overarching goal of the proposed research has not only an immediate (i.e., concurrent well-being of an OVC as a child), but also a delayed (i.e., prospective well-being of an OVC as an adult) outcome of early deprivation. The formation of the proposed sample will allow the laboratory to lay the foundation for the creation of longitudinal cohorts that can be studied continuously, as the children who will be recruited in the study as infants and toddlers will grow up.