Abecedarian Research Project

Background

Studies have shown that poverty in early childhood has long-lasting negative consequences for cognitive development and academic outcomes. Children in low-income families tend to lag behind their peers in the earliest school years, suggesting that they enter school at a disadvantage. University-based model programs and research by government organizations have attempted to understand and overcome these negative academic odds.

Most of these endeavors focused on the theory that by providing early intellectual stimulation to at-risk children, cognitive development would be enhanced and allow children to enter school better prepared to learn. This preparation would, in theory, increase the probability of early school success and eventually result in vocational achievement and positive social adaptation in adulthood.

Unfortunately, few early childhood programs were sufficiently well controlled to permit scientists to evaluate the extent to which long-term outcomes were[Page 2] attributable to the program itself. Researchers were able to assess short-term gains in cognitive development, and they did find improvement in academic performance; however, these gains began to dissipate 3 to 6 years after participants entered school.

The Abecedarian project differed from most other early childhood programs in that (1) it was a carefully controlled study in which half the participants were randomly assigned to receive early intervention in a high-quality child care setting and half were in a nontreated control group; (2) it began in early infancy, whereas other programs began at age 2 or older; and (3) treated children had 5 years of exposure to high-quality early education, whereas most other programs were of shorter duration. This degree of scientific control gave investigators greater confidence that differences between the treated and untreated individuals could be attributed to the intervention itself, rather than to differences among treated and untreated families.

Study Design

Along with principal investigator Dr. Craig Ramey, Margaret Burchinal, PhD, adjunct professor, biostatistics, UNC acted as senior scientist and director of design and statistics. Other investigators included Martie Skinner, PhD, adjunct assistant sociology professor at UNC–Greensboro; Elizabeth P. Pungello, PhD; Barbara Wasik, PhD; and Oscar Barbarin, BA, MA, MS, PhD, Fellow, Preyer Distinguished Fellow for Strengthening Families, psychology, UNC. Joseph Sparling, PhD, and Isabelle Lewis were the codevelopers for the “Learning Games” curriculum.

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