Rubin D H, Erickson C J, San Agustin M, Cleary S D, Allen J K, Cohen P
Department of Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Flushing Hospital medical Center, Flushing, NY 11355, USA.
Pediatrics. 1996 Mar;97(3):289-94.
During the past 10 years, the number of homeless families has increased in every region of the United States. Despite several studies of this population, there are few data regarding the cognitive functioning of these homeless children. The aim of this controlled study was to determine the effect of homelessness on cognitive and academic functioning of children aged 6 to 11 years.
Homeless children (N = 102) and their mothers living in shelters were compared with a housed group of children (N = 178) and their mothers selected from the homeless child's classroom in New York City between August 1990 and August 1992. Groups were compared using standardized cognitive and academic performance instruments.
Controlling for child's age, sex, race, social class, and family status, verbal intelligence (estimated by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test) and nonverbal intelligence (estimated by the Raven's Progressive Matrices) were not significantly different between the groups. However, academic achievement (measured by the Wide Range Achievement Test-Revised [WRAT-R]) was significantly poorer in reading, (75% of homeless children compared with 48% of housed children were below grade level), spelling (72.4% of the homeless children compared with 50% of housed children were below grade level) and arthmetic (53.6% of homeless children compared with 21.7% of housed children were below grade level). These dramatic differences in academic performance did not appear to be related to the mother's report of the number of days missed from school or the length of homelessness, but were associated with: (1) the number of school changes for the WRAT-R reading subtest and (2) grade repetition for the WRAT-R spelling subtest.
These data demonstrae no difference in cognitive functioning between homeless and housed children. However, homeless children performed significantly more poorly than housed children in tests of academic performance.
在过去10年中，美国每个地区无家可归家庭的数量都有所增加。尽管对这一群体进行了多项研究，但关于这些无家可归儿童认知功能的数据却很少。这项对照研究的目的是确定无家可归对6至11岁儿童认知和学业功能的影响。
1990年8月至1992年8月期间，将居住在收容所的无家可归儿童（N = 102）及其母亲与从纽约市无家可归儿童班级中选出的有住房的儿童群体（N = 178）及其母亲进行比较。使用标准化的认知和学业成绩工具对两组进行比较。
在控制了儿童的年龄、性别、种族、社会阶层和家庭状况后，两组之间的言语智力（通过皮博迪图片词汇测试估计）和非言语智力（通过瑞文渐进矩阵估计）没有显著差异。然而，学业成绩（通过修订的广泛成就测试[WRAT-R]衡量）在阅读方面明显较差（75%的无家可归儿童低于年级水平，而有住房儿童为48%）、拼写（72.4%的无家可归儿童低于年级水平，而有住房儿童为50%）和算术（53.6%的无家可归儿童低于年级水平，而有住房儿童为21.7%）。学业成绩的这些显著差异似乎与母亲报告的缺课天数或无家可归的时长无关，而是与以下因素有关：（1）WRAT-R阅读子测试中的学校转学次数，以及（2）WRAT-R拼写子测试中的留级情况。
这些数据表明，无家可归儿童和有住房儿童在认知功能上没有差异。然而，在学业成绩测试中，无家可归儿童的表现明显比有住房儿童差。
