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Getting beyond the “convenience sample” in research on early cognitive development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2010

Anne Fernald
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. afernald@stanford.edu

Abstract

Research on the early development of fundamental cognitive and language capacities has focused almost exclusively on infants from middle-class families, excluding children living in poverty who may experience less cognitive stimulation in the first years of life. Ignoring such differences limits our ability to discover the potentially powerful contributions of environmental support to the ontogeny of cognitive and language abilities.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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