A Longitudinal Study of Three Brain Damaged Children

Abstract

The developmental course of three children with brain damage (now 14 to 16 years of age) was followed since early infancy in the New York Longitudinal Study. Data on behavioral characteristics, patterns of parental attitudes and practices, clinical, neurological, and psychiatric evaluation, and psychometric findings at different age periods are available. Each child has shown a different behavioral course that could not be explained only in terms of motor dysfunction, intellectual deficit, patterns of parental management and attitudes, or more general features of environmental demand alone, but also required a consideration of the constellation of temperamental organization. Patterns of adaptation and levels of functioning were the complex product of the interaction of all these factors. One child developed the clinical syndrome of childhood schizophrenia.