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进程的影响。


了解早期社会心理忽视对人类发展进程的影响，对世界各地生活在逆境中的数百万儿童具有影响。在美国，向儿童保护服务机构报告的病例中约有 76% 涉及忽视;在全球范围内，有超过 1.5 亿名孤儿或被遗弃儿童，其中包括 1050 万因 COVID-19 而成为孤儿。在世界大部分地区，没有主要照顾者的儿童在机构环境中抚养长大。我们回顾了二十年的研究，该研究基于唯一一项将寄养作为机构护理替代方案的随机对照试验。我们报告说，随机分配到照常持续护理（机构护理）的儿童在社交、认知和情感发展方面存在持续缺陷，并显示出大脑发育中断的证据。相比之下，随机分配到寄养的儿童在大多数功能领域都有所改善，尽管恢复的程度在一定程度上取决于他们被寄养时的年龄和安置的稳定性。这些发现对于理解人类发展的关键时期以及阐明社会心理环境在塑造人类发展的多个领域中的力量具有重要意义。