Researchers from many branches of scientific endeavor are accumulating research on the importance of the early years. Genomicists' work in biological embedding, economists studying the economics of human potential, medical clinicians investigating sources of health risks, and much more all point in the same direction: the importance of the early years.
From Vygotsky’s learning theory and Piaget’s learning from within, through the Perry Preschool and Abecedarian projects of the late 1960s and after, to Hart and Risley’s “Disparities in Early Vocabulary Growth (1995), psychologists and sociologists have played a central role in our understanding of early learning and ECE. More recently, psychologists and sociologists have found educational experiences including social and emotional learning in the early years are important for later success in school (Hartman, Winsler and Manfra, 2017) and beyond (Janta, van Belle and Steward, 2016) further emphasizing the early years for building a foundation for future learning and life. A meta-analysis by O’Connor, de Feyter and others (2017), in research for the U.S. Department of Education, found “Decades of developmental and educational research show that students’ social and emotional competence is not only important in its own right (early behavior problems are the greatest predictor of long-term negative outcomes like incarceration, substance abuse, and unemployment), but also improves students’ academic performance (p. 3).”
Accumulating evidence suggests the human brain has windows of sensitivity to negative events and conditions, especially in infancy and even in pre-natal periods. Adverse events in these periods can lead to what is referred to by genomicists as biological embedding which may cause abnormal cognitive and behavioral functioning, including impaired learning, memory, and depressive- and anxiety-like behaviors, as well as other negative outcomes later in life (Vaiserman and Koliada, 2017).
In perhaps the watershed study on the subject (number of citations > 13,000 per Google Scholar, 2021) Dr. Vincent Felitti and associates showed persons who have experienced exposure to four or more categories of adverse childhood experiences, “compared to those who had experienced none, had 4- to 12-fold increased health risks for alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, and suicide attempt; a 2- to 4-fold increase in smoking, poor self-rated health, ≥50 sexual intercourse partners, and sexually transmitted disease; and a 1.4- to 1.6-fold increase in physical inactivity and severe obesity (Felitti et al, 1998, p. 245).”
Biological embedding is generally applied to early life adversities “such as child maltreatment, caregiver stress or depression, and domestic or community violence” which epidemiological studies have shown are associated with adverse outcomes later in life. These outcomes include increased risk of “diabetes, heart disease, cancers and psychiatric illnesses (Berens, Jensen, and Nelson, 2017, p. 135).”
The rapidly advancing frontiers of 21st-century biological sciences now provide compelling evidence that the foundations of lifelong health are also built early, with increasing evidence of the importance of the prenatal period and first few years after birth (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2020).”
"Much evidence suggests that investing in early childhood development—in the early formation of skills that produce valuable and productive individuals and in strengthening the parenting resources of American families—is one of the smartest ways to create a better economy and stronger society for all (Heckman, 2013)."
Plasticity is the characteristic of the brain to modify its neural structure and pathways, for better or worse, in response to external stimuli (i.e., good or bad experiences). These external experiences affect brain development in much of life and significantly in the early years. Neuroscience has identified periods of sensitivity in the early years, during which the human brain is particularly equipped to gain facility with a specific set of knowledge or for a skill or ability. After this window closes, learning or acquiring the facility becomes very difficult or even impossible. For example, nearly all children learn their native language effortlessly with appropriate grammar and pronunciation. Others who come to a language later in life have difficulty mastering grammar, pronouncing words and acquiring vocabulary – the process has become laborious and fundamentally limited (Power and Schlaggar, 2017, p. 9; Krageloh-Mann, I., 2004, p. 84).
Next