Early institutionalized care disrupts the development of emotion processing in prosody.

Millions of children worldwide are raised in institutionalized settings. Unfortunately, institutionalized rearing is often characterized by psychosocial deprivation, leading to difficulties in numerous social, emotional, physical, and cognitive skills. One such skill is the ability to recognize emotional facial expressions.

Language Outcomes in Adults with a History of Institutionalization: Behavioral and Neurophysiological Characterization.

Impoverished early care environments are associated with developmental deficits in children raised in institutional settings. Despite the accumulation of evidence regarding deficits in general cognitive functioning in this population, less is known about the impact of institutionalization on language development at the level of brain and behavior. We examined language outcomes in young adults and adolescents raised in institutions (n = 23) as compared to their socioeconomic status and age peers raised in biological families (n = 24) using a behavioral language assessment and linguistic event-related potentials (ERPs).