AdamT
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Step back and think this through for a moment. Let's grant you the bolded red text. Let's say that intervention improves IQ. Secondly there is the more universal phenomenon of IQ in young children being somewhat responsive to the heavy control adults have over their environment and so we see slight improvement as the children age, but that process reverses itself as the children begin to assert their own individuality more.
Now, if you tailor your intervention within the window of time where IQ can be raised and before it begins to recede, then your intervention will show success. Your control group is also showing success from normal parental, teacher, involvement. The way you phrased your question appears like you don't credit the children in the intervention group with aging, and so also enhancing their IQ via this normal process, but you grant that the children in the control group get this benefit.
What has really happened is that the gap that was there in the beginning remained fairly steady over the 5 years of the study. If the intervention was successful then we would expect the gap that was recorded at the onset of the experiment to grow over time, thus showing the effects of the intervention.
Well, you have a lot of hypotheticals in there that aren't actually necessary to the discussion, because the actual experiment included monitoring of the subject children up to age 21. The bottom line is that they effectively proved that intensive, high-qualit child care from infancy can and does improve cognitive ability and it also has a number of quantifiable benefits, e.g.:
"Follow-up assessment of the participants involved in the project has been completed. Progress was monitored at ages 3, 4, 5, 6.5, 8, 12, 15 and 21.[5] The areas covered were cognitive functioning, academic skills, educational attainment, employment, parenthood, and social adjustment. The significant findings of the experiment were as follows:[6][7]
Impact of child care/preschool on reading and math achievement, and cognitive ability, at age 21:
An increase of 1.8 grade levels in reading achievement
An increase of 1.3 grade levels in math achievement
A modest increase in Full-Scale IQ (4.4 points), and in Verbal IQ (4.2 points).
Impact of child care/preschool on life outcomes at age 21:
Completion of a half-year more of education
Much higher percentage enrolled in school at age 21 (42 percent vs. 20 percent)
Much higher percentage attended, or still attending, a 4-year college (36 percent vs. 14 percent)
Much higher percentage engaged in skilled jobs (47 percent vs. 27 percent)
Much lower percentage of teen-aged parents (26 percent vs. 45 percent)
Reduction of criminal activity"
The project concluded that high quality, educational child care from early infancy was therefore of utmost importance."
Abecedarian Early Intervention Project - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If you have a rational critique of the experiment I haven't been able to identify it.
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