Effects of childhood institutionalization on semantic processing and its neural correlates persist into adolescence and adulthood.

Individuals raised in institutionalized care settings are more likely to demonstrate developmental deficits than those raised in biological families. One domain that is vulnerable to the impoverished environments characteristic of some institutionalized care facilities is language development. We used EEG to assess ERPs and source-localized event-related spectral perturbations (ERSPs) associated with semantic processing at different levels of picture-word conflict and low versus high word frequency.

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.