Does the Carolina abecedarian early intervention project prevent sociocultural mental retardation?

Abstract

An assessment is made of the claim that, when compared with a control group, this early intervention project has produced and maintained higher IQs in children who, because they were from economically and socially impoverished homes, were considered to be at high-risk for mild mental retardation. Four cohorts were recruited over a 5-year period, but the experimental group in Cohorts 3 and 4 produced unusually high scores on the Bayley MDI. Differences between experimental and control groups at 60 months of age were comparable to differences at 6 months of age. The assertion that the experimental group's advantage was due to the effects of the first few months of intervention, rather than to the chance allocation of brighter children to the experimental group, is discussed. © 1992.