Study Shows That Infant Retardation Can Be Reversed

Infant retardation can be reversed by sufficient environmental stimulation, Jerome Kagan, professor of Developmental Psychology, demonstrated in a recent report.

Kagan said the report implies that American schools do not work long enough with "slow starters," particularly those living in poverty areas.

Kagan presented the study to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington last month.

Isolation

For three years he compared Indian children in Guatamela with middle-class American children. By custom, the Indians isolate infants during their first year without toys or playmates. The children emerge from the experience severely retarded, Kagan found, and from ages four through six they are as much as three years behind American children.

Both groups of children, however, score the same on memory and ability tests when they reach 11, the report said.

"Intellectual development is much more plastic than anyone has surmised," Kagan said in the report. He suggested that schools stress achievement in music, painting, or public speaking. "The indispensable thing a child needs from his early school years is the knowledge that there are important skills at which he is competent," Kagan told the AAAS.