Early Childhood Experience
Dec. 12th, 2010 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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7rin_on_adoptionJames, O. (2008) The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of Affluenza. London: Vermillion. (pp.18-20)
Bold & underline = my emphasis
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Contrary to decades of claims that early experiences have no special influence on subsequent emotional well-being and personality, it is finally becoming apparent that negative experiences during the first five years do cause more damage than those in subsequent years. Many thousands of studies suggest this ...
...
Studies of adoptees suggest that the older the child when adopted, the greater the damage. While intellectual deficits can often be largely reversed by stimulating adoptive environments, lasting psychopathology is found in significant proportions even where the adoptive nurture is first rate. Causal links have been demonstrated between adult personality disorder and maltreatment before the age of two; one study has shown this to be the strongest single predictor of dissociation at age nineteen, after allowing for quality of subsequent care and other factors. On top of this, it now seems clear that psychoanalyst John Bowlby was essentially correct in his claim that the period from six months to three years is a sensitive time for forming a secure pattern of attachment.
...
Many studies of animals have shown that early experience has a greater effect on the brain but it is only recently that evidence of this has been provided in humans. For example, lasting damage to cortisol levels and persistently atypical brainwave patterns have been demonstrated in children whose mothers were depressed when they were infants, regardless of whether the mother recovered from the depression. The very size of brain structures can be affected by early care: for example, the volume of the hippocampal region of the brain is 5 per cent less in women who were sexually abused as children. The earlier that abuse is suffered, the greater the reduction in intracranial volume. It is increasingly apparent that patterns of neurotransmitters and hormone levels are often an effect of past and present psychological processes, rather than physiology or genetics.
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Bold & underline = my emphasis
<Quote>
Contrary to decades of claims that early experiences have no special influence on subsequent emotional well-being and personality, it is finally becoming apparent that negative experiences during the first five years do cause more damage than those in subsequent years. Many thousands of studies suggest this ...
...
Studies of adoptees suggest that the older the child when adopted, the greater the damage. While intellectual deficits can often be largely reversed by stimulating adoptive environments, lasting psychopathology is found in significant proportions even where the adoptive nurture is first rate. Causal links have been demonstrated between adult personality disorder and maltreatment before the age of two; one study has shown this to be the strongest single predictor of dissociation at age nineteen, after allowing for quality of subsequent care and other factors. On top of this, it now seems clear that psychoanalyst John Bowlby was essentially correct in his claim that the period from six months to three years is a sensitive time for forming a secure pattern of attachment.
...
Many studies of animals have shown that early experience has a greater effect on the brain but it is only recently that evidence of this has been provided in humans. For example, lasting damage to cortisol levels and persistently atypical brainwave patterns have been demonstrated in children whose mothers were depressed when they were infants, regardless of whether the mother recovered from the depression. The very size of brain structures can be affected by early care: for example, the volume of the hippocampal region of the brain is 5 per cent less in women who were sexually abused as children. The earlier that abuse is suffered, the greater the reduction in intracranial volume. It is increasingly apparent that patterns of neurotransmitters and hormone levels are often an effect of past and present psychological processes, rather than physiology or genetics.
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