早期经验对儿童心理发展的影响

儿童早期经验包括产前环境、出生时身体状况、出生后家庭养育和学前教育经历等，这些方面对儿童心理能力发展有重要而长期的影响。该文基于国外新近开展的大型纵向研究，对胎儿期母亲的情绪行为特征，出生状况，出生后母亲工作状况，父亲教养行为，学前教育状况等对儿童认知能力、学业成就、社会行为等的预测作用,以及种族、性别、家庭经济地位等背景因素在两者之间的调节作用进行了介绍，最后对我国设计和开展相关研究提出了建议。

The Effects of Early Experience on Children's Mental Development

Early experience involved the prenatal environment,physical condition at birth,family rearing and preschool experience.All of these factors have important and long-term effects on children’s lifelong development.Behavior researches proposed that early years were the foundational stage for the full range of human competencies.Recent studies in neuroscience also demonstrated that early experiences influenced the development of neural circuits which mediate cognitive,linguistic,emotional,and social capacities.Recently,Western developed countries not only actively formulated early educational policies,but also organized national large-scale longitudinal studies.The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development(NICHD),Statistics Canada and the Human Resources and Social Development Canada(HRSDC),and the National Center for Education Statistics(NCES) all sponsored national studies to explore the significant influence of early experience on children’s developmental outcomes,and found consistently that the birth period,the first three years after birth and preschool years were the key stages for children’s cognitive and social development;furthermore,these studies also suggested that there were different effects of early experience on different aspects of children’s outcomes.By summarizing the significant findings of these large-scale studies,the article mainly introduced the role of maternal depression and health behavior,birth weight and perinatal disease,maternal employment and fathers’ parenting behaviors,child’s age of first entry to care center,child-care quality and type in children’s cognitive abilities,academic achievements,psychosocial adjustment,behavior problems and their trajectories.The results showed that the risk of child behavior problems increased with the mother having anxious emotion,substance use,or domestic violence.Some results of studies concerning the role of parenting found the long-term impact of early maternal employment on children’s cognitive and behavioral outcomes,but the effects were moderated by family socio-economic status,children’s race and gender,etc.In addition,recent studies demonstrate that parenting sensitivity is an important factor in children’s cognitive and academic development,and emphasize the importance of understanding the unique contributions of fathers’ parenting to children’s development.Last,as the article summarized,the studies on the effects of preschool experience vary with intensity,duration of exposure and the quality of children from different backgrounds.The main results show that preschool experiences are associated with higher reading and mathematics skills at school entry,but also with higher levels of behavior problems;however,it is needed to analyze the different effects of different preschool arrangements in terms of the moderating effects of individual and family characteristics,including child’s gender,race,parenting education level and family social economic status,etc.In China,previous studies on early parenting and education are faced with some challenges,such as limited sample size,researchers not intending to provide answers to the policy makers,and lack of effective cooperation,etc.So it is suggested that in the future,designing and implementing cooperative and multidisciplinary studies with national samples and based on China’s specific situations are urgently needed.