Objective: Several longitudinal studies had shown that early deprivation and institutionalization during the first six months of life affects the emotional, cognitive, social and neurophysiologic development. Nevertheless, our understanding of possible similar effects of delayed institutionalization, in preschool-age remains unclear to this day. The goal of this study is to evaluate the cognitive performance of institutionalized children with history of preschool-age physical abandonment.Method: 18 male institutionalized children with history of abandonment during the preschool-age (2–5 years old) and comparison group matched by age, handedness, gender, educational and socioeconomic level were tested on multiple tasks of attention, memory and executive functions.Results: We found a cognitive impairment in the institutionalized children in several measures of attention, memory and executive functions. This is the first report of cognitive impairment related to late abandonment and institutionalization effects (after 2 years old), extending the already known effects on early institutionalization.Conclusions: This preliminary study suggests that environmental factors including abandonment and institutional care, can affect not only the infancy period, but also the preschool period providing new insights into our understanding of neurocognitive development.

中文翻译：

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学龄前遗弃的潜在后果：机构化儿童的神经心理学发现。

目标：几项纵向研究表明，生命最初六个月内的早期剥夺和收容会影响情绪、认知、社交和神经生理发育。然而，我们对学龄前延迟收容所可能产生的类似影响的理解至今仍不清楚。本研究的目的是评估有学龄前身体遗弃史的机构化儿童的认知表现。方法：对18名学龄前（2-5岁）有遗弃史的男性收容儿童和按年龄、惯用手、性别、教育和社会经济水平匹配的对照组进行注意力、记忆力和执行功能的多项任务测试。结果：我们发现收容所儿童在注意力、记忆力和执行功能的多项测量中存在认知障碍。这是与晚期遗弃和机构化效应（2 岁后）相关的认知障碍的第一份报告，扩展了已知的早期机构化效应。结论：这项初步研究表明，包括遗弃和机构照料在内的环境因素不仅会影响婴儿期，还会影响学龄前期，为我们对神经认知发展的理解提供了新的见解。