Home Environment and Cognitive Development in the First 3 Years of Life: A Collaborative Study Involving Six Sites and Three Ethnic Groups in North America

Attempted to examine the generalizability of environment/development relationships among 3 ethnic groups across the first 3 years of life. Social status did not show a consistent relationship to either quality of home environment or children's developmental status across the various groups. Results indicated a fairly consistent relationship between HOME scores and children's developmental status, although there were some ethnic and social status differences in the relationship. Measures of specific aspects of the child's home environment, such as parental responsivity and availability of stimulating play materials, were more strongly related to child developmental status than global measures of environmental quality such as SES. When the child's early developmental status and early home environment were both very low, the likelihood of poor developmental outcomes was markedly increased compared with cases when only one was low.