Understanding the impact that early psychosocial neglect has on the course of human development has implications for the millions of children around the world who are living in contexts of adversity. In the US, approximately 76% of cases reported to child protective services involve neglect; world-wide, there are more than 150 million orphaned or abandoned children, including 10.5 million orphaned because of COVID-19. In much of the world, children without primary caregivers are reared in institutional settings. We review two decades of research based on the only randomized controlled trial of foster care as an alternative to institutional care. We report that children randomly assigned to continued care as usual (institutional care) suffer from persistent deficits in social, cognitive, and emotional development, and show evidence of disruptions in brain development. By contrast, children randomly assigned to foster care show improvements in most domains of functioning, although the degree of recovery is in part a function of how old they were when placed into foster care and the stability of that placement. These findings have important implications for understanding critical periods in human development, as well as elucidating the power of the psychosocial environment in shaping multiple domains of human development.

中文翻译：

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罗马尼亚的被遗弃儿童：早期深刻的社会心理剥夺对人类发展过程的影响。


了解早期社会心理忽视对人类发展进程的影响对于世界各地数百万生活在逆境中的儿童具有重要意义。在美国，向儿童保护服务机构报告的案件中，约 76% 涉及忽视；全球有超过 1.5 亿孤儿或被遗弃儿童，其中 1,050 万人因 COVID-19 成为孤儿。在世界许多地方，没有主要照顾者的儿童是在机构环境中抚养的。我们回顾了二十年来基于寄养作为机构护理替代方案的唯一随机对照试验的研究。我们报告说，被随机分配到照常继续护理（机构护理）的儿童在社交、认知和情感发展方面持续存在缺陷，并且有证据表明大脑发育受到干扰。相比之下，被随机分配到寄养家庭的儿童在大多数功能领域都表现出改善，尽管恢复程度在一定程度上取决于他们被安置在寄养家庭时的年龄以及该安置的稳定性。这些发现对于理解人类发展的关键时期以及阐明心理社会环境在塑造人类发展的多个领域的力量具有重要意义。