EARLY INTERVENTION AND EARLY EXPERIENCE

For 4 decades, vigorous efforts hate been based on the premise that ea rly intervention for children of poverty and, more recently, for child ren with developmental disabilities can yield significant improvements in cognitive, academic, and social outcomes. The history of these eff orts is briefly summarized and a conceptual framework presented to und erstand the design, research, and policy relevance of these early inte rventions. This framework, biosocial developmental contextualism, deri ves from social ecology developmental systems theory, developmental ep idemiology and developmental neurobiology. This integrative perspectiv e predicts that fragmented, weak efforts in early intervention are not likely to succeed, whereas intensive, high-quality, ecologically perv asive interventions can and do. Relevant evidence is summarized in 6 p rinciples about efficacy of early intervention. The public policy chal lenge in early intervention is to contain costs by more precisely targ eting early interventions to those who mast need and benefit from thes e interventions. The empirical evidence on biobehavioral effects of ea rly experience and early intervention has direct relevance to federal and stare policy development and resource allocation.