Early adolescent outcomes of institutionally-deprived and non-deprived adoptees. II: language as a protective factor and a vulnerable outcome

Background: There is uncertainty about the extent to which language skills are part of general intelligence and even more uncertainty on whether deprivation has differential effects on language and non-language skills.Methods: Language and cognitive outcomes at 6 and 11 years of age were compared between a sample of 132 institution-reared Romanian children adopted into UK families under the age of 42 months, and a sample of 49 children adopted within the UK under the age of 6 months who had not experienced either institutional rearing or profound deprivation.Results: The effects of institutional deprivation were basically similar for language and cognitive outcomes at age 6; in both there were few negative effects of deprivation if it ended before the age of 6 months and there was no linear association with duration of deprivation within the 6 to 42 month range. For the children over 18 months on arrival (range 18–42 months), the presence of even very minimal language skills (imitation of speech sounds) at the time of arrival was a strong beneficial prognostic factor for language and cognitive outcomes, but not for social/emotional/behavioural outcomes. Individual variations in adoptive parent characteristics were unrelated to differences in language or cognitive outcomes, possibly as a consequence of the limited variability in the adoptive family group.Conclusions: Minimal language probably indexes some form of cognitive reserve that, in turn, indexes the degree of institutional deprivation

ADHD-like symptoms and attachment in internationally adopted children.

Internationally adopted children seem to be more likely to show ADHD-like symptoms than non-adopted children. The aims of this study were to explore the existence of ADHD-like symptoms and/or diagnosis in a sample of internationally adopted children depending on their country of origin and to describe the links that may exist between the display of these symptoms and observed narrative-based attachment patterns. A Catalan sample of 58 adopted children aged 7-8 (24 from Eastern Europe, 23 from China, and 11 from Ethiopia) was assessed with the Behavioral Assessment System for Children to identify ADHD-like symptoms, and the Friends and Family Interview to identify children's' attachment patterns. Results indicated that children adopted from Eastern Europe showed a trend toward more hyperactivity and significantly more attention problems than girls adopted from China. Children with a secure attachment showed significantly less attention problems and a trend toward less hyperactivity. More studies focusing on the etiology and treatment of these symptoms in adopted children are needed