The relation of child care to cognitive and language development

Children from 10 sites in the United States were followed from birth to age 3 to determine how experiences in child care relate to cognitive and langu age development (Ns varied between 595 and 856, depending on the assessment ). Multiple assessments of family and child care environments and of cognit ive and language competence were collected. Analyses that adjusted for mate rnal vocabulary score, family income, child gender, observed quality of the home environment, and observed maternal cognitive stimulation indicated th at the overall quality of child care, and language stimulation in particula r, was consistently but modestly related to cognitive and language outcomes at ages 15, 24, and 36 months. The effect sizes for high (top quartile) ve rsus low (bottom quartile) quality ranged from .18 to .48. After adjusting for child care quality, cumulative experience in center-based care was asso ciated with better outcomes than was participation in other types of care. The amount of time children spent in care was not related to outcomes. Chil dren in exclusive maternal care did not differ systematically from children in child care. Tests for lagged relations of earlier child care experience s to later performance (adjusting for current child care) showed that langu age stimulation predicted subsequent cognitive and language performance 9 t o 12 months later. Although children in center care at age 3 performed bett er than children in other types of care, earlier experience in child care h omes was associated with better performance at age 3 than was experience in other types of care. The relations of child care variables to outcomes did not vary consistently as a function of family income, quality of home envi ronment, child gender, or ethnic group.