Prevention of intellectual disabilities: early interventions to improve cognitive development

This paper presents a conceptual framework that has guided three randomized, controlled early intervention trials designed to improve cognitive development and social competence in high-risk young children from birth to 3 years of age. Two of the projects (Abecedarian and CARE) enrolled infants from economically and socially low-resource families and the other project (IHDP) was an eight-site randomized controlled trial with 985 low birth-weight and premature infants and their families. IHDP families varied widely in their economic and social resources. Results consistently indicated positive effects of the intervention on child IQ during the first 3 years of life. Children from the lowest resource families consistently benefited the most from the early intervention.