Benefits of Early Intervention Persist into Adulthood

In the Carolina Abecedarian Project (ABC), 111 children born between 1972 and 1977 and living in poverty in North Carolina were randomized to an intervention that emphasized language development, emotional regulation, and cognitive skills with supervised play for 8 hours daily, two meals and a snack, and access to primary care from birth through age 5 years. Children in the control group received adequate nutrition but no programs to enhance cognitive or social development. Previous reports documented significant improvements in cognitive and social development by age 3 years in the intervention group (Am J Ment Defic 1984 Mar; 88:515), and a long-term follow-up study found that children in the intervention group were four times more likely…