The Plasticity of Intellectual Development: Insights from Preventive Intervention

Author(s): Craig T. Ramey, Keith Owen Yeates and Elizabeth J. Short

Source: Child Development, Vol. 55, No. 5 (Oct., 1984), pp. 1913-1925
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development
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The Plasticity of Intellectual Development:
Insights from Preventive Intervention

Craig T. Ramey, Keith Owen Yeates,

and Elizabeth J. Short
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

RAMEY, CRAIG T.; YEATEs, KEITH OWEN; and SHORT, ELIZABETH J. The Plasticity of Intellectual
Development: Insights from Preventive Intervention. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1984, 55, 1913-1925.
Debates regarding the plasticity of intelligence are often fired by a confusion between 2 distinct
realms of development, that is, between developmental functions (e.g., a group's average IQ over
time) and individual differences (e.g., the relative rank ordering of individual IQs within a group).
Questions concerning the stability of these 2 realms are statistically independent. Thus there are 2
kinds of intellectual plasticity, and there may be no developmental convergences between them. In
the present study, data from an early intervention program were used to investigate the 2 kinds of
plasticity separately and to examine certain possible convergences between them. The program
involved children at risk for developmental retardation who were randomly assigned at birth to 2
rearing conditions (i.e., educational daycare vs. no educational intervention) and whose intellectual
development was then studied longitudinally to 4 years of age. Our findings indicate that develop-
mental functions are moderately alterable through systemic early education, particularly after in-
fancy, whereas individual differences are moderately stable, again particularly after infancy. They
also indicate that the 2 kinds of plasticity are independent; the alteration of developmental functions
through daycare affects neither the stability nor the determinants of individual differences. We
discuss the implications that these findings have for current models of mental development, for the
nature-nurture debate, and for arguments concerning the efficacy of early intervention programs.

Debates regarding the plasticity of intel-
lectual development have often generated
sparks among their participants. Those sparks,
moreover, have occasionally erupted into
flames, as when Jensen (1969) published his
monograph concerning the boosting of IQ.
Flames, unfortunately, sometimes generate
smoke. Thus, as McCall (1981) noted, our per-
spective on the malleability of intellectual de-
velopment has been obscured unnecessarily.
Specifically, we have fallen victim to the divi-
sion between Cronbach's (1957) two disci-
plines of scientific psychology--"experi-
mentalists," on the one hand, with their
manipulations of variables and comparisons of
group means, and "correlationalists," on the
other, with their observations of individual
differences and descriptive correlations.
Both disciplines generate convincing po-
sitions regarding intellectual malleability.
The experimentalists frequently stress intel-
lectual change, because findings from both ex-
perimental and natural interventions suggest
that average levels of intellectual functioning
can be altered significantly (see Clarke &
Clarke, 1976; Lazar, Darlington, Murray,
Royce, & Snipper, 1982; Ramey, Bryant, &
Suarez, in press; Ramey, Sparling, Bryant, &
Wasik, 1982). The correlationalists frequently
stress intellectual consistency, because a con-
siderable literature indicates that individual
differences become remarkably consistent
during development (see Bayley, 1970;
Bloom, 1964; McCall, 1979). The problem is
that the positions of the two disciplines are
apparently contradictory, yet the contradiction
is just that-apparent, not real. As McCall
(1981) and Ramey and Haskins (1981) have
pointed out, the two disciplines actually pro-
vide independent and complementary per-
spectives on intellectual development.

We would like to note that the authors made equal contributions to this paper; the order of
authorship reflects the overall contributions of the authors to the ongoing research project that
supplied the data reported here. The research has been supported by grants from the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Spencer Foundation, the Carnegie Founda-
tion, the Office of Special Education, U.S. Department of Education, the Department of Human
Resources of the State of North Carolina, and the Department of Social Services of Orange County,
North Carolina. We would like to thank four anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier
version of the paper and Marie Butts and Pam Mann for their help in preparing the manuscript.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Craig T. Ramey, Frank Porter Graham Child Development
Center, University of North Carolina, Highway 54 Bypass West, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514.
[Child Development, 1984, 55, 1913-1925. @ 1984 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.
All rights reserved. 0009-3920/84/5505-0001$01.00]

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1914 Child Development
To illustrate the independence of the two
disciplines, consider first a figure with a line
that plots, for a sample of children, the aver-
age values of mental age over chronological
age. This line would serve to describe the de-
velopmental function of mental age for those
children (see Wohlwill, 1973). Consider also a
second figure with lines that plot, for the same
sample, each child's separate values for men-
tal age over chronological age. These lines
would serve to illustrate the stability of the
children's relative rank ordering on mental
age over time-that is, the consistency of their
individual differences.
Now suppose that the children had been
randomly assigned at birth to two rearing
conditions, which presumably varied in their
potential for enhancing intellectual develop-
ment. We might ask whether the develop-
mental functions of the two groups differ
across time. We also might ask whether the
individual differences within the groups are
stable across time. The first question is experi-
mental; the second is correlational. Experi-
mental research, then, concerns the malleabil-
ity of the developmental function, whereas
correlational research concerns the malleabil-
ity of individual differences. Developmental
functions and individual differences are statis-
tically independent, though, because the
means of two sets of scores are unrelated to
the correlation between the two sets. Thus,
experimentalists and correlationalists study
separate aspects of mental development, and
their positions regarding intellectual plasticity
are distinct because they actually concern dif-
ferent kinds of plasticity.
The failure to fully recognize this distinc-
tion is largely responsible for the obscurity in
debates about the plasticity of intellectual de-
velopment, because as its consequence both
disciplines suffer from two critical shortcom-
ings. The first is that both disciplines tend to
stress either the presence or absence of plas-
ticity, without attending to developmental
timing and the constraints it places on intel-
lectual plasticity. Development, though, im-
plies change (McCall, 1977; Wohlwill, 1973).
Within the context of debates regarding the
plasticity of intellectual development, there-
fore, the issues should not be whether change
occurs, but instead when it occurs, what its
limits are, and how it is determined-again,
with reference to which kind of plasticity is
under discussion. In other words, a more pro-
ductive debate might concern the balance
struck by and the determinants of change and
stability during ontogenesis. As long as the
two disciplines remain distracted by their ap-
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parent disagreements, though, they will con-
tinue to argue the presence rather than the
timing, limits, or determinants of intellectual
plasticity.
The second shortcoming common to both
disciplines is that they continue the study of
intellectual plasticity separately. Although
the two kinds of plasticity are potentially inde-
pendent and therefore can be studied sepa-
rately, we should remain aware of potential
empirical convergences between them. For
instance, we might ask whether alterations
in developmental functions of intelligence
also produce changes either in the stability
of individual differences or in the relative im-
portance of the determinants of individual dif-
ferences. Several research designs are poten-
tially able to answer such questions (see, e.g.,
McCall, Eichorn, & Hogarty, 1977; Scarr &
Weinberg, 1983); early intervention programs,
for example, can be particularly appropriate.
Such programs are designed to produce aver-
age group gains in IQ, or in other words to
alter the developmental function; however,
they also may simultaneously alter the stabil-
ity and determinants of individual differences
in IQ.
One such program, for instance, provided
educational daycare for a sample of disadvan-
taged children. As was hoped, their average
IQ was higher than expected given their en-
vironmental background. In addition, though,
the children's individual differences in IQ
were more stable than expected given the pre-
vious intelligence test literature (Ramey,
Campbell, & Nicholson, 1973). A subsequent
program experimentally compared educa-
tional daycare with no intervention for a ran-
domly assigned sample of disadvantaged chil-
dren. As was intended, the average IQ of the
experimental group was significantly higher
than that of the control group. Additionally,
though, the correlation between child IQ and
maternal IQ was not significant (r = -.04) in
the experimental group but was significant
(r = .43) in the control group (Ramey & Has-
kins, 1981). Thus, results from early interven-
tion programs illustrate at least some of the
convergences that might occur between the
two kinds of plasticity. Of course, these as
well as other kinds of convergences should
continue to be investigated; given the divi-
sion between the experimental and correla-
tional disciplines, though, they rarely are.
In summary, we risk considerable misun-
derstanding by studying changes in different
aspects of intellectual development and their
hypothesized determinants separately and by
ignoring the developmental timing of those
 Ramey, Yeates, and Short 1915

changes. The present study attempted to in-
vestigate the plasticity of intellectual develop-
ment, but to avoid these sources of misunder-
standing. To achieve this goal, we relied on
data collected during an ongoing early inter-
vention program. The program involved chil-
dren at risk for developmental retardation,
who were randomly assigned at birth to two
rearing conditions (i.e., systematic educa-
tional daycare vs. no educational intervention)
and then studied longitudinally to 4 years of
age. The data drawn from the program in-
cluded measures of maternal IQ, which was
assessed before the children's births, and both
child IQ and the quality of the home environ-
ment, which were assessed at regular inter-
vals during the children's first 4 years of life.
Using these data, we asked a series of four
specific questions regarding malleability
within the two realms of intellectual develop-
ment.
Our first two questions concerned the
plasticity of developmental functions and in-
dividual differences considered separately.
That is, we asked, first, if and when the mean
IQ performances of the experimental and con-
trol group children differ, and, second, if and
when the children's individual differences in
IQ are stable. Our latter two questions con-
cerned possible convergences between the
two kinds of plasticity. That is, given mean IQ
performance differences between groups, we
asked if systematic early education might af-
fect either, third, the patterns of stability of
individual differences within groups or,
fourth, the configurations of maternal IQ and
home environment as determinants of such
differences within groups. Taken together,
these questions allow the experimental and
correlational disciplines to make separate as
well as combined contributions, which we
hope will thereby yield a clearer perspective
on the plasticity of intellectual development
during infancy and early childhood.'
Method
Subjects
The families participating in this study
were drawn from an experimental early inter-
vention program designed to prevent the oc-
currence of developmental retardation and
known as the Carolina Abecedarian Project
(see Ramey, MacPhee, & Yeates, 1982, for a
detailed description). Families were referred
to the program through local hospitals and
clinics, the county Department of Social Ser-
vices, and other community agencies. Once
referred, preliminary interviews were con-
ducted to determine whether the families ap-
peared to meet the selection criteria de-
scribed below. If so, mothers were invited to
participate in further assessments.
During these assessments, which typi-
cally occurred during the last trimester of
pregnancy, mothers provided demographic
information about themselves and their
families. In addition, their intelligence was as-
sessed using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence
Scale (WAIS; Wechsler, 1955). Final determi-
nation of eligibility followed these proce-
dures. Criteria for selection included 13 fac-
tors, such as maternal IQ, maternal education,
and earned family income, that were
weighted and combined to yield a score on a
High-Risk Index (see Ramey & Smith, 1977,
for details). Only families at or above a prede-
termined cutoff score were considered eligi-
ble.
Four cohorts of families were admitted
between 1972 and 1977. Of 122 families
judged to be eligible and invited to join the
program, 121 accepted the condition of ran-
dom assignment to the experimental or con-
trol groups. One of the pregnant mothers mis-
carried, thereby reducing the sample to 120
families. Of these 120 families, 112 (93%) ac-
cepted their actual group assignment. Since
assignment, four children have died, two have
been diagnosed as retarded due to organic
etiology, and two have been reassigned from
the control group to the experimental group
because of life-threatening medical conditions
judged by physicians to be more optimally
treated at the daycare center than at home;
none of these families is included in this re-
port. The base sample, then, consists of 104
families that produced 106 children (one pair
of siblings and one pair of twins), of which 54

1 We should note that Ramey and Haskins (1981) used data from the same program reported
here to address questions somewhat similar to our own. Our research, however, includes all four
cohorts of children who have been involved in the intervention program, whereas Ramey and
Haskins (1981) included only the first two cohorts. Our research also involves between-group com-
parisons of within-group stabilities and determinants of individual differences; Ramey and Haskins
(1981) reported only within-group comparison of those correlations. Perhaps most important, the
distinction drawn here between developmental functions and individual differences was not drawn
explicitly by Ramey and Haskins (1981). Thus our report reflects a considerable methodological and
theoretical extension.

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1916 Child Development

are in the experimental group and 52 are in
the control group. Of these 106, eight (N = 4
in each group) have dropped out of the pro-
gram, resulting in an attrition rate of approxi-
mately 7%.
For the purposes of this study, we also
eliminated all families where the child did not
live with the mother through the first 4 years
of life (N = 4 for the experimental group; N =
3 for the control group) or where complete
data were unavailable during that period (N =
4 for the experimental group; N = 1 for the
control group). Thus, the final sample consists
of 41 experimental group families, with 23
male and 19 female children, and 44 control
group families, with 19 male and 25 female
children. Table 1 presents a summary of fam-
ily characteristics for each group during the
year of the children's births. In composite, this
sample represents a portion of the general
population whose socioeconomic and intel-
lectual disadvantages have been demon-
strated to place children at risk for later intel-
lectual retardation and academic failure (see,
e.g., Heber, Dever, & Conry, 1968; Ramey &
Finkelstein, 1981; Ramey, Stedman, Borders-
Patterson, & Mengel, 1978).
Intervention Program
The program to which these families
were admitted consisted of two components.
First, all families were provided with nutri-
tional supplements and health care. These
services were included in order to reduce po-
tential Hawthorne effects in the experimental
group and to insure the delivery of a set of
services already guaranteed, in principle, to
all members of our society. Second, the ex-
perimental group children received direct
educational programming through the provi-
sion of systematic, developmental daycare.
Children began attending the program as
young as 6 weeks of age, and attendance be-
gan by age 3 months for 98% of the children.
The daycare center operated from 7:45 A.M. to
5:30 P.M. each weekday for 50 weeks per year.
Transportation to and from the center was pro-
vided for the children. The settings for the
children were structured so as to be age and
developmentally appropriate. Generally, chil-
dren were grouped according to age, with sec-
tions for infants, toddlers, and so on. Twelve
teachers and assistants, aided by three admin-
istrative staff members, were responsible for
providing the educational program for the
children. The typical teacher/child ratio var-
ied from 1:3 for infants to 1:6 for 4-year-olds.
The educational program itself was de-
signed to foster intellectual development,
with particular emphasis on language devel-
opment. The approach to language develop-
ment relied heavily on the frameworks devel-
oped by Blank (1973) and Tough (1976). The
aim was to promote a particular kind and
amount of verbal interaction between teacher
and daycare pupil. The kind of verbal interac-
tion was modeled on what a middle-class
mother establishes with her child; the amount
was higher, perhaps more like what a tutorial
hour might provide. Because our program was
competing with extensive experience in an-
other kind of linguistic environment, namely,
the children's homes, we assumed that it
could not be as casual and diluted as the nor-
mal family interaction. To foster certain types
of linguistic functioning in the children's rep-
ertoires, then, we were trying to provide a
large number of practice opportunities. (For a
more detailed treatment of our curricular ap-
proach to language development, see Ramey,
McGinness, Cross, Collier, & Barrie-Blackley,
1982.)

TABLE 1

FAMILY CHARACTERISTICS IN THE YEAR OF THE CHILDREN'S BIRTHS

GROUP

Experimental Control
CHARACTERISTIC (N = 41) (N = 44)

Maternal IQ (M/SD) ................ 85.88/11.96 84.11/11.52

Maternal education (M/SD)a.......... 10.52/1.73 10.14/1.82
Maternal age (M/SD) .............. 19.57/4.11 20.57/6.05
Unmarried mother (%) ............. 76 71
Father absent (%) ................... 76 75
Firstborn child (%) .............. 67 64
No earned income (%) .............. 48 59
Black (%) .............. ........ 95 100
a Total years completed.

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The provision of these practice opportu-
nities, finally, took place primarily within the
context of social interactions. The nature of
these social interactions was dictated by the
standard curricula used in the program, which
can be divided into two segments. The first
was formally applied up to the children's third
birthdays. It consisted of the Carolina Infant
Curriculum and the Task Orientation Cur-
riculum, both developed by Sparling and
Lewis (1979). These curricula consist of over
300 items in language, motor, social, and cog-
nitive areas (see Ramey, McGinness, et al.,
1982, for a more complete description). The
goal of these curricula was to enrich early de-
velopment in these four realms and to prepare
the children for the more structured educa-
tional curricula that composed the second seg-
ment of the program.
The second segment, which began after
the children's third birthdays and lasted until
school entry, was designed to provide chil-
dren with a systematic exposure to areas such
as science, math, and music. The formal cur-
ricula, which teachers could draw on as
needed for particular children, included the
GOAL math program (Karnes, 1978), the Pea-
body Early Experience Kit (Dunn, Chun,
Crowell, Dunn, Avery, & Yachel, 1976), the
Bridges to Reading program (Greenberg &
Epstein, 1973), and the Wallach and Wallach
(1976) reading program. In addition, adaptive
social behavior was encouraged through the
use of My Friends and Me program (Davis,
1977). In summary, the educational program
was designed to test the hypothesis that de-
clines in tested intelligence in a high-risk
sample of children could be prevented by pro-
viding an early education program during the
preschool years.
Procedure
Intellectual assessments.-As mentioned
previously, mothers were given a WAIS at the
time they were interviewed for the program.
Children were tested with the Bayley Scales
of Infant Development (Bayley, 1969) at 6, 12,
and 18 months of age (the Mental Develop-
ment Index, or MDI, is reported here) and
with the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale
(Terman & Merrill, 1973) at 24, 36, and 48
months of age. The tests were administered
by 11 experienced female examiners whose
assignment to children was performed more
or less at random, depending on who was
available at a given time. The child's primary
caregiver was present during all assessments.
Home environment assessments.-The
home environments of the families were as-
sessed using the Home Observation for Mea-
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Ramey, Yeates, and Short 1917
surement of the Environment (HOME) inven-
tory (Caldwell, Heider, & Kaplan, Note 1) at 6,
18, 30, and 42 months of age. The HOME in-
ventory consists of 45 items representing six
categories of environmental stimulation at 6,
18, and 30 months of age, and of 80 items rep-
resenting seven categories of environmental
stimulation at 42 months of age. Scoring of the
items requires a combination of direct obser-
vation and interviewing, with approximately
two-thirds of the items scored from direct ob-
servation of the mother-child dyad. Both cate-
gory and total scores are obtained; for the pur-
poses of this report, only the total scores were
used. All HOME data for this study were col-
lected by three female interviewers, again
more or less at random, in the families' own
homes when the primary caregiver and child
were both present. Interobserver agreement
across items in both this sample (see Ramey,
Mills, Campbell, & O'Brien, 1975) and other
samples (e.g., Elardo, Bradley, & Caldwell,
1975) has consistently exceeded 90%.
Table 2 presents the means, standard de-
viations, and correlations for the raw total
HOME scores for both groups. The means for
both groups, as might be expected, are lower
than those typically found in middle-class
homes (see Ramey et al., 1975), although the
two groups do not differ significantly at any
occasion. The stability correlations are compa-
rable to those found in other studies (e.g.,
Bradley, Caldwell, & Elardo, 1979), with me-
dian 1-year stabilities of .48 in the experimen-
tal group and .62 in the control group. The
HOME inventory, then, seems to provide a
reliable and stable measure that differentiates
our high-risk families from more advantaged
families.
We wanted, however, to have summary
indexes of home environments for each child
IQ assessment. Because of scaling differences
in the HOME inventory across the assessment
occasions, the scores at each assessment were
first standardized (M = 0, SD = 1). A total
HOME score was then computed for each
family at each outcome age, consisting of the
sum of all standardized HOME total scores
temporally prior to the respective 12-, 24-, 36-,
and 48-month child IQ assessments. This pro-
cedure is justified, we feel, because of the
high stability of HOME total scores from year
to year (see Table 3) and because the effects of
home environments appear to be cumulative
(see Yeates, MacPhee, Campbell, & Ramey,
1983). These standardized and summed
scores, then, represent indexes of the environ-
mental stimulation available in children's
homes prior to particular intellectual assess-
1918 Child Development
TABLE 2

EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL GROUP MEANS, STANDARD DEVIATIONS, AND

STABILITY CORRELATIONS OF RAW TOTAL SCORES ON THE HOME INVENTORY

Variable (Months) 1 2 3 4 M SD

1. HOME 6 ...... ... .41 .08 .27 28.14 4.78

2. HOME 18 ..... .43 ... .48 .57 30.10 5.33
3. HOME 30 ..... .39 .62 ... .53 30.29 5.93
4. HOME 42 ..... .24 .56 .68 ... 55.50 8.55
M ................ 27.36 28.66 30.45 55.14
SD .............. 5.04 5.99 5.62 9.60

NOTE.--Experimental group is above diagonal, with N = 42; control group is below

diagonal, with N = 44. All boldface correlations are significant, p < .05. HOME = Home
Observation for Measurement of the Environment inventory.

TABLE 3

EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL GROUP MEAN IQ PERFORMANCES

GROUP

Experimental Control
(N = 42) (N = 44)
OCCASION
(Months) M SD M SD F (1,84)
6 ........... 106.26 16.68 101.36 15.76 1.96
12 .......... 112.14 15.92 105.73 15.33 3.62
18 .......... 108.64 14.55 89.68 12.90 40.99*
24 .......... 96.60 11.40 84.98 9.26 27.02*
36 .......... 101.67 13.88 84.41 13.77 33.49*
48 .......... 102.71 11.93 89.00 13.48 24.86*

NOTE.-At 6, 12, and 18 months, Bayley MDIs are presented; at 24, 36, and 48
months, Stanford-Binet IQs are presented.
*p < .001.

ments; hereafter, they are referred to as total
home indexes.
Results
Developmental Function Plasticity
As mentioned earlier, our first concern
was the plasticity of the developmental func-
tion for intelligence, which would be demon-
strated if significant IQ differences were
found between experimental and control
group children. Such differences would imply
that the rate of cognitive development is re-
sponsive to environmental manipulation-
that is, that the shape of developmental func-
tions is alterable through early education. To
investigate this possibility, the IQ scores of
the children were subjected to a 2 (group) x 6
(age) repeated-measures analysis of variance,
using a multivariate approach to repeated mea-
sures (McCall & Appelbaum, 1973).
538.21, p < .001, because of an overall de-
crease in IQ at 24 months followed by a slow
increase. The analysis also reveals a main ef-
fect for group, F(1,84) = 28.87, p < .001,
which favors the experimental group children.
Both of these main effects, though, are
qualified by a significant age x group interac-
tion, F(5,80) = 4.92, p < .001. The interaction
arises because the average IQ difference be-
tween groups becomes larger during develop-
ment; tests of the simple effect of group at
each age show that the group differences are
not significant at 6 and 12 months of age but
are significant and favor the experimental
group children at 18, 24, 36, and 48 months
(see Table 3). These findings offer support for
the notion that developmental functions for
intellectual development are at least moder-
ately alterable through systematic early edu-
cation, particularly after the first year of life.

The analysis first reveals a main effect for Individual Difference Plasticity
age of assessment, F (5,80) = 200.28, p < .001. Our second concern was the plasticity
This effect is primarily quadratic, F(1,84) = of individual differences in IQ; we asked

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whether individual differences would demon-
strate stability during development for either
or both groups. Both groups do evidence sig-
nificant stability from 6 to 48 months (see
Table 4). Of the 15 stability correlations com-
puted for each group, only one would be ex-
pected to be significant by chance alone.
Nonetheless, 14 are significant in the experi-
mental group, and 11 are significant in the
control group.
We should note, though, that both groups
also evidence a significant increase in the sta-
bility of individual differences from 6 to 48
months.2 Using 12-month intervals to illus-
trate this developmental trend, we find that in
the experimental group the correlations be-
tween 6- and 18-month MDIs (r = .52) and
12-month MDIs and 24-month Stanford-Binet
IQs (r = .45) are both significantly lower than
the correlation between 36- and 48-month
Stanford-Binet IQs (r = .75; both z's > 1.82,
both p's < .05). Similarly, for the control
group, the correlations between 6- and 18-
month MDIs (r = .27) and 12-month MDIs
and 24-month Stanford-Binet IQs (r = .44) are
both significantly lower than the correlations
between 24- and 36-month Stanford-Binet IQs
(r = .70, both z's > 1.94, both p's < .05) and
36- and 48-month Stanford-Binet IQs (r = .78;
both z's > 2.57, both p's < .01). Thus, both
groups show not only stable individual differ-
ences in IQ but also similar tendencies for
those individual differences to become in-
creasingly predictable during development.
Given their different developmental
functions, though, the two groups might also
differ in their patterns of stability of individual
differences. That is, although stable in both
groups, individual differences might be more
Ramey, Yeates, and Short 1919
so in one group than in the other; this was our
third concern. We therefore conducted a com-
parison of the two groups' correlation matri-
ces, using Jennrich's (1970) asymptotic X2 test.
This test was not significant, X2(15) = 15.72, p
> .05. The stability of individual differences
in IQ and the developmental trend of that sta-
bility, then, do not appear responsive to ma-
nipulations of the developmental function.
Determinant Configuration Plasticity
Our final concern was whether those vari-
ables that presumably help to determine indi-
vidual differences in children's intelligence
would show differential contributions as the
result of alterations in the developmental
function via educational daycare. This con-
cern was addressed by conducting separate
hierarchical regression analyses to predict the
children's 12-, 24-, 36-, and 48-month intelli-
gence test scores. Two sets of predictors were
entered into the regression equations. One set
consisted of treatment group membership,
maternal IQ, and the appropriate total home
index (with treatment-group membership
coded as a dichotomous classification vari-
able). This set was entered into the equations
first. The other set consisted of two cross-
product terms, which were created by multi-
plying group membership by both maternal
IQ and the appropriate total home indexes.
These cross-product terms were entered into
the equations second. If they were found to be
significant predictors of children's intelli-
gence after the variance explained by the first
set of predictors had been removed, they
would indicate differential contributions of
maternal IQ and the home environment to
children's intelligence in the experimental
and control groups (Cohen & Cohen, 1975).

TABLE 4

EXPERIMENTAL AND CONTROL GROUP IQ STABILITY CORRELATIONS

Variable (Months) 1 2 3 4 5 6

1. MDI 6 .......... ... .70 .52 .49 .35 .25

2. MDI 12 ......... .53 ... .61 .45 .45 .31
3. MDI 18 ......... .27 .51 ... .79 .60 .46
4. SB 24 .......... .49 .44 .55 ... .67 .65
5. SB 36 .......... .28 .28 .59 .70 ... .75
6. SB 48 ...........33 .21 .52 .66 .78

NOTE.-Experimental group correlations are above diagonal, with N = 42; control

group correlations are below diagonal, with N = 44. All boldface correlations are signifi-
cant, p < .05. MDI = Bayley Mental Development Index; SB = Stanford-Binet IQ.

2 Because the tests reported here involve comparisons of dependent correlations, the Fisher z
test for comparing independent correlations is inappropriate. The appropriate tests, which were used
for these analyses, include the Hotelling-Williams z test and the asymptotic-variance z test (Darling-
ton, 1975).

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1920 Child Development
Table 5 presents the standardized regres-
sion weights for the first and second set of
predictors when they are entered in the order
described above and tested for significance in
that order. As Table 5 illustrates, none of the
cross-product terms add significantly to the
prediction of child IQ at any of the four assess-
ment occasions. Therefore, the results indi-
cate that the contributions of maternal IQ and
the home environment to individual differ-
ences in IQ are similar for the experimental
and control group children. Collapsing across
groups, the contributions can be summarized
as follows: at 12 months, the two predictors
account for 6% of the variance in children's
intelligence, with the home environment
playing a uniquely significant role; at 24
months, the two predictors account for 8% of
the variance, but with maternal IQ playing a
uniquely significant role; at 36 months, the
two predictors account for 14% of the vari-
ance, and both maternal IQ and the home en-
vironment are significant predictors; finally, at
48 months, the two predictors account for 26%
of the variance, and again both maternal IQ
and the home environment are significant pre-
dictors. The overall pattern reflects a mono-
tonic increase in the predictability of child IQ,
which occurs within the context of shifts in
the relative contributions of maternal IQ and
the home environment (cf. Yeates et al., 1983).
Individual differences in IQ become less vari-
able during development, then, and the con-
tributions of factors that help to determine the
magnitude of such differences do not appear
particularly alterable by educational daycare.
It should be especially noted from these re-
gression analyses that group assignment be-
comes a highly salient predictor of children's
IQ beginning in the second year of life, with
standardized regression weights in Set 1 of
.46, .50, and .43 at 24, 36, and 48 months of
age, respectively. Thus, from 24 to 48 months
the most powerful predictor of the IQs of the
children in this sample was whether or not
they received educational intervention. When
the variables of group assignment, maternal
IQ, and home environments are considered in
aggregate, we observe an orderly progression
in percentage of IQ variance accounted from
10% at 12 months to 50% at 48 months.
Discussion
At the outset, we argued that the failure
of experimentalists and correlationalists to
distinguish between developmental functions
and individual differences has resulted in
heated debates regarding the plasticity of in-
telligence. Using data from a longitudinal in-
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tervention project, therefore, we asked a
series of questions regarding the plasticity of
the two realms of intellectual development.
Our first two questions concerned the plastic-
ity of developmental functions and individual
differences considered separately. Our results
indicate that developmental functions are
moderately plastic, particularly after infancy,
whereas individual differences are relatively
stable, again particularly after infancy. Our lat-
ter two questions concerned possible conver-
gences between the two kinds of plasticity.
Here our results indicate that the two kinds of
plasticity are independent. The plasticity of
developmental functions affects neither the
stability nor the determinants of individual
differences. Taken together, then, our find-
ings illustrate the independence, both con-
ceptually and empirically, of plasticity in the
two realms of intellectual development.
The validity of these findings and their
interpretation, of course, might be challenged.
Consider the plasticity of developmental
functions. Our argument that such functions
are moderately and increasingly plastic dur-
ing early childhood is based on mean IQ per-
formance differences between experimental
and control group children. Our interpretation
of such differences might be questioned on
the grounds that the intervention program
"taught" the tests used for evaluation. The
teaching staff or the educational curricula
might have guided the program such that the
mean IQ differences between groups repre-
sent the acquisition by experimental group
children of specific bits of knowledge about
test items rather than of more general cogni-
tive abilities.
Within our program, however, the teach-
ing staff never witnessed the administration of
cognitive tests, and the curriculum-develop-
ment team tried never to create curriculum
items that were identical or very similar to test
items. More generally, coaching on IQ tests
has been found to produce negligible gains in
performance on such tests (Jensen, 1980). We
would argue, therefore, that the mean IQ dif-
ferences between groups represent true gains
in mental development by children who re-
ceived educational daycare rather than simply
an artifact of teaching to the tests.
Such IQ differences between groups may
still be atypical, though, because they might
be unlike those produced by other interven-
tion programs. Nonetheless, the mean IQ dif-
ferences reported here are consistent with
those found in other programs with similarly
disadvantaged children (see Lazar et al., 1982;
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1922 Child Development
Ramey, Bryant, et al., in press; Ramey, Spar-
ling, et al., 1982). More specifically, the mag-
nitudes of the IQ differences produced here
are somewhat larger than those produced by
less intense programs, but somewhat smaller
than those produced by the most intense pro-
gram, which is known as the Milwaukee Proj-
ect (Garber & Heber, 1981). We should ac-
knowledge that mean IQ differences have not
been produced with more advantaged chil-
dren, but perhaps only because experimental
intervention programs to date have not in-
cluded large numbers of such children-in
other words, educational effects on such chil-
dren remain an empirical issue. The plasticity
of developmental functions demonstrated
here, therefore, is probably neither an artifact
of our methods nor an unusual instance of
such plasticity.
Consider, then, the plasticity of individ-
ual differences. Our argument that individual
differences in intelligence are moderately and
increasingly stable is based on an examination
of the IQ correlation matrices for both groups
of children. Our interpretation of those matri-
ces might be questioned on the grounds that
our assessment schedule called for changes in
tests, and therefore might have produced
spurious correlations. More specifically, the
increasing stability of IQ within groups might
reflect the shift from the Bayley MDI to the
Stanford-Binet IQ rather than an actual
change in the stability of individual differ-
ences in intelligence.
Our correlation matrices, however, are
not affected in any obvious manner by the
shift from the Bayley MDI to the Stanford-
Binet IQ; the correlations involving the Bay-
ley and the Stanford-Binet are often higher
than those involving either the Bayley or the
Stanford-Binet alone (see Table 4). Further-
more, the reliabilities of both these measures
are quite high, exceeding .85 for all of the ages
reported here (Bayley, 1969; Terman & Mer-
rill, 1973), and do not differ in magnitude
sufficiently to explain our results. Thus we
would argue that the increasing stability of IQ
within groups represents increasingly stable
individual differences in intelligence rather
than the results of changing from a less to a
more reliable test.
Again, though, such increasingly stable
individual differences might still be atypical.
The correlation matrices reported here, how-
ever, are patterned much like those in other
studies-both showing greater stability given
shorter intervals between tests and greater sta-
bility given later ages of initial testing (see
Bayley, 1970; Bloom, 1964; McCall, 1979).
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Moreover, the stability of the determinants of
individual differences has also been repli-
cated; adoption studies find that the quality of
adoptive homes affects average IQ (i.e., devel-
opmental functions) but not the relative rank
ordering of IQ (i.e., individual differences;
Scarr & Weinberg, 1983). The increasing sta-
bility of individual differences demonstrated
here, therefore, is also probably neither an ar-
tifact of methodology nor an atypical finding.
In summary, our findings appear valid.
What, then, are their broader implications?
First, they support a more general model of
mental development proposed by McCall
(1981), which rests on the concept of canaliza-
tion. According to Waddington (1957), canali-
zation refers to a species-typical develop-
mental path followed because of strong
biological self-righting tendencies. McCall
(1981) argued that "mental development is
highly canalized during the first 18-24
months of life but thereafter becomes less
canalized" (p. 5). As a consequence, McCall
(1981) contended, the two aspects of mental
development would have certain characteris-
tics. Because of the early canalization, devel-
opmental functions are less malleable during
early infancy than somewhat later. Because of
the early self-righting tendencies, individual
differences during early infancy will be
neither as stable nor as correlated with ge-
netic variation or environmental variation as
they will later. Our findings support McCall's
(1981) arguments. We found that develop-
mental functions were alterable only after 12
months, that individual differences became
increasingly stable, and that the contributions
of maternal IQ and home environment to
child IQ increased in both groups (which may
illustrate the increasing roles of genetic and
environmental variation, respectively, as de-
terminants of individual differences; see
Yeates et al., 1983). The investigation of intel-
lectual plasticity, then, can have important im-
plications for understanding the process of in-
tellectual development.
Investigations of plasticity also have im-
plications for the never-ending nature-nurture
debate, because that debate has been clouded
by the same confusion found in debates re-
garding intellectual plasticity. Jensen (1969)
claimed that we should not expect to eradicate
the average IQ performance differences typi-
cally found between social-class and ethnic
groups; he based this claim partly on evidence
showing that the heritability of IQ within
groups is quite high. Average IQ differences
between groups are unrelated to the heritabil-
ity of IQ within groups, however, because

they are two different aspects of mental devel-
opment. A heritability estimate describes the
importance of genetic variation as a determi-
nant of individual differences in IQ in a par-
ticular population, given its particular envi-
ronment; it does not concern the population's
developmental function. Two distinct popula-
tions can have the same large heritability, but,
as a result of environmental differences, also
have different average IQs (i.e., different de-
velopmental functions). In the present study,
average IQ differences between groups coex-
isted with similar contributions of maternal
IQ and home environment to individual dif-
ferences in IQ within groups. Thus it is en-
tirely possible, and probably likely, that both
groups have the same heritability of IQ, yet
significantly different average IQs. Investiga-
tions of plasticity that distinguish between the
two aspects of intellectual development, then,
can help show that nature-nurture arguments
are often specious.
Such investigations can also help inform
arguments concerning the efficacy of inter-
vention programs designed to enhance intel-
lectual development. The present study ad-
dresses two important issues concerning such
programs. The first is program generalizabil-
ity. The differential effectiveness of early in-
tervention programs for different kinds of dis-
advantaged children has been a continuing
concern for social policy analysts (see Bron-
fenbrenner, 1974; Datta, 1979; Ramey, Yeates,
& MacPhee, 1984). Our regression analyses
were conducted to test the effect of interven-
tion on the contributions of maternal IQ and
home environment as frequently hypoth-
esized determinants of individual differences
in IQ. Nonetheless, they also can be concep-
tualized as tests of the effect of variations in
such determinants on the efficacy of interven-
tion. In fact, the results of these analyses sug-
gest that our intervention program was
equally effective across the range of maternal
IQs and home environments represented in
this disadvantaged sample. This finding is in
accord with similar findings from the Consor-
tium for Longitudinal Studies (Lazar et al.,
1982), and supports their suggestion that high-
quality intervention programs "can be effec-
tive for different kinds of low-income chil-
dren" (p. 65).
The second issue concerning interven-
tion programs that is addressed by the study of
intellectual plasticity is developmental tim-
ing. One of the most common arguments has
been that intervention should begin early in
infancy. The argument rests on the assump-
tion that intellectual development is particu-
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Ramey, Yeates, and Short 1923
larly malleable during infancy (Hunt, 1961),
as illustrated by the low stability of individual
differences in IQ at that time as compared to
later periods of development. Intervention
programs, though, are evaluated primarily by
comparing group differences (i.e., develop-
mental functions). The results of the present
study show that the developmental function of
the experimental group was altered only after
the first year of life by preventing a decline in
IQ relative to the control group. One way to
quantify this issue is to express the magnitude
of the intervention impact as an effect size.
Effect sizes are usually expressed as the dif-
ference of an experimental group's mean
score minus a control group's mean score di-
vided by the standard deviation of the control
group at a particular measurement occasion
(see Glass, 1976). Performing such computa-
tions on the MDI and IQ data in Table 3 re-
veals an average effect size of a nonsignificant
.36 during the first year of life. From 18
months through 48 months, however, the av-
erage effect size is a highly significant 1.25
standard deviation units favoring the group
that received educational daycare. This
finding, when considered in light of McCall's
(1981) argument that early mental develop-
ment is highly canalized, suggests that inter-
vention programs for initially healthy children
might be more beneficial during early child-
hood than during early infancy. Of course,
early intervention might prepare children for
the transition to less canalized intellectual de-
velopment in a way that later intervention
might not, and this hypothesis is worthy of
empirical test. Nonetheless, the apparent sta-
bility of the developmental function during
early infancy requires careful thought as fu-
ture intervention programs are considered for
implementation.
Studies of the plasticity of intellectual de-
velopment, therefore, can have important
methodological, empirical, theoretical, and
political implications. The distinction be-
tween developmental functions and individ-
ual differences must be clear in such studies,
though, if we are to avoid misunderstanding.
The present study provides an example of
such a distinction, but its results are only one
step in a continuing process. Further investi-
gation of intellectual plasticity is clearly war-
ranted in different populations, across differ-
ent age ranges, and using different methods
(see Appelbaum & McCall, 1983, for a de-
scription of alternative methodologies). Such
investigation, of course, may not douse the
fires in debates regarding the plasticity of in-
tellectual development, but it may help to
clear the smoke.
1924 Child Development
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