Improving cognitive ability in chronically deprived children

Science. 1978 Apr 21;200(4339):270-8. doi: 10.1126/science.635585.

Abstract

Beginning at different ages in their preschool years, groups of chronically undernourished children from Colombian families of low socioeconomic status participated in a program of treatment combining nutritional, health care, and educational features. By school age the gap in cognitive ability between the treated children and a group of privileged children in the same city had narrowed, the effect being greater the younger the children were when they entered the treatment program. The gains were still evident at the end of the first grade in primary school, a year after the experiment had ended.

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Age Factors
  • Child
  • Child, Preschool
  • Cognition / physiology*
  • Education
  • Environment
  • Humans
  • Learning Disabilities / prevention & control*
  • Nutrition Disorders / diet therapy
  • Nutrition Disorders / physiopathology*
  • Nutritional Physiological Phenomena
  • Socioeconomic Factors
  • Time Factors