The physical environment and child development: An international review

Abstract

A growing body of research in the United States and Western Europe documents significant effects of the physical environment (toxins, pollutants, noise, crowding, chaos, housing, school and neighborhood quality) on children and adolescents’ cognitive and socioemotional development. Much less is known about these relations in other contexts, particularly the global South. We thus briefly review the evidence for relations between child development and the physical environment in Western contexts, and discuss some of the known mechanisms behind these relations. We then provide a more extensive review of the research to date outside of Western contexts, with a specific emphasis on research in the global South. Where the research is limited, we highlight relevant data documenting the physical environment conditions experienced by children, and make recommendations for future work. In these recommendations, we highlight the limitations of employing research methodologies developed in Western contexts (Ferguson & Lee, 2013). Finally, we propose a holistic, multidisciplinary and multilevel approach based on Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) bioecological model to better understand and reduce the aversive effects of multiple environmental risk factors on the cognitive and socioemotional development of children across the globe.

A Comparative Study of the Cognitive Function of the Hearing-Impaired and Non-Hearing Impaired in Two Primary Schools in Lagos State, Nigeria

“…A cross sectional study in Baghdad City, Iraq using the Colored Raven's Matrices showed that children that performed poorly on the Colored Raven's Matrices lived in stressful environments [15]. Therefore, it would be more meaningful if results of intelligence tests conducted in environments similar to the participants are used in their interpretation [14,15]. Studies on cognitive functioning have been conducted in different parts of the world within different environments but baseline data do not exist for students attending Wesley School for the hearingimpaired in Lagos, Nigeria or for hearing-impaired children in Nigeria.…”

“…A lot of research on environment and intelligence level has been conducted in countries that rank high on the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Index and the results were used to interpret level of intelligence on people from countries that rank low on the Human Development Index [14]. Environmental factors impact cognitive attainment.…”

School effects on non-verbal intelligence and nutritional status in rural Zambia

“…Research investigating effects of school quality on cognitive development and how different factors shape cognitive skills has originated mainly from the United States and Western Europe (Evans, 2006; Ferguson, Cassells, MacAllister, & Evans, 2013). Over the past three decades, most of these studies of school effects on student achievement in LMIC (Glewwe, Hanushek, Humpage, & Ravina, 2011; Riddell, 2008; Scheerens, 2001) have examined the impact of school structure and organization, physical and human resources (e.g., class size, teacher training and teacher salaries, availability of textbooks, general facilities and equipment; Fuller, 1987; Fuller & Clarke, 1994; Lee & Zuze, 2011) and instructional processes (e.g., teacher's use of instructional time, the amount and type of curriculum covered; Fuller & Heyneman, 1989).…”

When can parents most influence their child's development? Expert knowledge and perceived local realities

“…Although environmental cues provide a major source of information to guide development, and capturing these cues is both essential and adaptive, such reliance opens a window of potential vulnerability when harsh early conditions trigger developmental trade-offs or direct impairments with subsequent cumulative long-term costs to function and well-being (Hanson and Gluckman; Hochberg et al, 2011). Hence, early exposures to adversity–both physical (such as crowding, poverty) and psychosocial (such as neglect or abuse, parental harshness or conflict) have been linked to later mental and physical health risk (Ferguson et al, 2013; Grant et al, 2014; Miller et al, 2011). Developmental neuroscience has found that the brain is sensitive not only to nutrition but also to pattern and quality of early experience (Fox et al; Petrosini et al, 2009).…”