Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215;
Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Jan 29;116(5):1808-1813. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1809145116. Epub 2019 Jan 14.
Children experiencing psychosocial deprivation as a result of early institutional rearing demonstrate many difficulties with memory and executive functioning (EF). To date, there is scant evidence that foster care placement remediates these difficulties during childhood. The current study examined longitudinal trajectories of memory and EF from childhood to adolescence in the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, a randomized controlled trial of foster care for institutionally reared children. We demonstrate that both ever- and never-institutionalized children show age-related improvements on several measures of memory and EF from age 8 to 16. Distinct patterns were observed for different domains of functioning: () Early-emerging disparities in attention and short-term visual memory, as well as spatial planning and problem solving, between ever- and never-institutionalized children persisted through adolescence; () the gap in spatial working memory between ever- and never-institutionalized children widened by adolescence; and () early difficulties in visual-spatial memory and new learning among children in foster care were mitigated by adolescence. Secondary analyses showed that higher resting EEG alpha power at age 8 predicted better EF outcomes in several domains at age 8, 12, and 16. These results suggest that early institutional rearing has enduring consequences for the development of memory and EF, with the possibility of catch-up among previously institutionalized children who start out with higher levels of problems. Finally, interindividual differences in brain activity relate to memory and EF across ages, thus highlighting one potential biological pathway through which early neglect impacts long-term cognitive functioning.
由于早期机构抚养而经历心理社会剥夺的儿童在记忆和执行功能 (EF) 方面表现出许多困难。迄今为止，几乎没有证据表明寄养安置可以在儿童时期解决这些困难。本研究在布加勒斯特早期干预项目中检查了从儿童期到青春期的记忆和 EF 的纵向轨迹，这是一项针对机构抚养儿童的寄养对照试验。我们表明，无论是曾经还是从未被机构收容的儿童，在从 8 岁到 16 岁期间，在几个记忆和 EF 测量指标上都表现出与年龄相关的改善。不同功能领域观察到不同的模式：（1）曾经和从未被收容的儿童之间在注意力和短期视觉记忆以及空间规划和解决问题方面的早期出现的差异在整个青春期都持续存在；（2）曾经和从未被收容的儿童之间在空间工作记忆方面的差距在青春期时扩大；（3）在寄养中的儿童在视觉空间记忆和新学习方面的早期困难在青春期得到缓解。二次分析表明，8 岁时的静息 EEGα波功率较高预示着在 8 岁、12 岁和 16 岁时几个领域的 EF 结果更好。这些结果表明，早期的机构抚养对记忆和 EF 的发展有持久的影响，以前被收容的儿童如果一开始就有更高水平的问题，那么他们有可能迎头赶上。最后，个体间大脑活动的差异与各年龄段的记忆和 EF 相关，从而突出了早期忽视对长期认知功能的潜在生物学途径之一。
