The Effects of Early Experience on Children's Mental Development

YU Ying; LI Yan-Fang

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2012, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (2) : 346-351.

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Abstract

Early experience involved prenatal environment, physical condition at birth, family rearing and preschool experience. All of these factors have important and long-term effects on children’s lifelong development. Behavior researches proposed that early years are the foundational stage for the full range of human competencies, recent studies in neuroscience also demonstrated that early experiences influence the development of neural circuits which mediate cognitive, linguistic, emotional, and social capacities. Recently, western developed countries not only actively formulated early educational policies, but also organized national large-scale longitudinal studies. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Statistics Canada and Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC), and National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) all sponsored national studies to explore the significant influence of early experience on children's developmental outcomes, and found consistently that birth period, the first three years after birth and preschool years are the key stages for children’s cognitive and social development, furthermore, these studies also suggested that there are different effects of early experience on different aspects of children’s outcomes. By summarized above significant findings of these large-scale studies, the article mainly introduced the role of maternal depression and health behavior, birth weight and perinatal disease, maternal employment and fathers’ parenting behaviors, child's age at first entry to center care, child-care quality and type on children’s cognitive abilities, academic achievements, psychosocial adjustment, behavior problems and their trajectories. The results showed that the risk of child behavior problems increased with the mother having anxious emotion, substance use, or domestic violence. Some results of studies concerning the role of parenting, and found the long-term impact of early maternal employment on children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes, but the effects are moderated by family socio-economic status, children’s race and gender, etc. In addition, recent studies demonstrated that parenting sensitivity is an important factor on children’s cognitive and academic development, and emphasized the importance of understanding the unique contributions of fathers’ parenting to children’s development. At last, the article summarized the studies on the effects of preschool experience vary by intensity, duration of exposure and the quality on children from different backgrounds. The main results showed that preschool experiences are associated with higher reading and mathematics skills at school entry, but also with higher levels of behavior problems, however, it is needed to analyze the different effects of different preschool arrangements by considering the moderating effects of individual and family characteristics, including child’s gender, race, parenting education level and family social economic status, etc. In China, previous studies on early parenting and education are facing with some challenges, such as the sample size is limited, the researchers don’t intend to provide answers to the policy makers, and lack of the effective cooperation, etc. So it is suggested that in the future, designing and implementing cooperative and multidisciplinary study with national sample and based on China’s specific situations are emergently needed.

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Prenatal experience / Child birth / Family rearing / Preschool experience / Child mental development

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The Effects of Early Experience on Children's Mental Development[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2012, 35(2): 346-351

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