A preliminary study of the cognitive and motor skills acquisition of young international adoptees

Samantha L. Wilson, Terri L. Weaver, Mary Michaeleen Cradock and Janet E. Kuebli

Children and Youth Services Review, 2008, vol. 30, issue 5, 585-596

Abstract: A better understanding of a child's developmental changes in the months following international adoption is needed. For the present study, an initial developmental assessment was completed within two months of an international adoption and compared with performance on the same measures six months later to explore the initial rate of developmental change. The children (8 boys and 18 girls) were adopted from six countries and ranged in age from 5 to 36 months at Time 1 (mean age = 14.77 months). Nineteen of the children (15 girls and 4 boys) spent the majority of their pre-adoptive life in an institution/orphanage. While roughly 60-70% of children had developmental scores within the range of mild to significant delay at Time 1, this incidence dropped to about 25-40% by Time 2. Generally, children from foster care (with scores within the normal range at Time 1) maintained their developmental trajectory at Time 2. Children from institutional care (with scores within the range of mild to significant delay at Time 1) improved greatly as a group and their mean developmental scores fell within the expected range of scores for their ages at Time 2. Clinical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0190-7409(07)00218-6
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:cysrev:v:30:y:2008:i:5:p:585-596

Access Statistics for this article

Children and Youth Services Review is currently edited by Duncan Lindsey

More articles in Children and Youth Services Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().