The effects of day care on young children: an environmental psychology approach

The present paper presents a framework for characterizing the emotional impact of day care environments and for predicting the consequent effects on child emotional reactions to day care and to separation, extent of active involvement in day care, and long-term effects of day care on cognitive and intellectual development. The physical and social environment of day care is characterized in terms of its emotional impact with use of three orthogonal dimensions: pleasure-displeasure, arousal-nonarousal, and dominance-submissiveness. Approach toward, or preference for, any setting is then predicted in terms of its emotional impact. Finally, day care settings are ordered in terms of their beneficial-detrimental effects by simply considering children's preference levels (approach) for the settings.