Home:
■ Those children who had more experience of playing with friends outside of the home showed
higher peer sociability and confidence.
■ The variable, whether the child had a regular bedtime, could be regarded as a marker for the
degree of structure in the child’s home life. This variable was associated with increased co-
operation/conformity and higher cognitive development scores.
■ Higher home learning environment scores were associated with increased co-
operation/conformity, peer sociability and confidence, lower anti-social and worried/upset
behaviour and higher cognitive development scores. The effect on cognitive development
was particularly pronounced. After age, it was the variable with the strongest effect on
cognitive development. Its effect was stronger than both social class and parental
education, which have often been found to be amongst the strongest predictors of children’s
cognitive development in previous studies.
■ The importance of the home learning environment indicates that what parents do is more
important than who parents are.
Childcare History:
• Being cared for by a relative e.g. usually a grandmother before entering the study showed
modest effects but was associated with higher co-operation/conformity and less anti-
social behaviour compared to children not cared for by a relative.
• Being cared for in a group of children outside the home (e.g. nurseries) before entering
the study at age 3 was slightly associated with increased anti-social behaviour and had a
important significant association with higher cognitive development scores.
■ Children who started at their pre-school centre before 3 years of age showed better
cognitive scores. This effect was apparent for children starting as young as 2 years of
age. However, when children started below 2 years of age there was no additional effect
of the time before 2 years of age.
■ Where children had intensive group care before 2 years of age there was a small but
significant increase in the likelihood of showing anti-social behaviour. This effect
primarily applies to children who attended private day nurseries and local authority day
nurseries.
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