Effect of Incarceration on Children's Cognitive Development

Imprisonment of parents causes many hardships for children. Children of incarcerated mothers usually experience disruptions in their home environments and child care arrangements and usually also experience social stigmatization. Children who accompany their mothers into prison are exposed to conditions that in all probability affect their cognitive development. This study investigated the possible effects that growing up in prison has on the cognitive development of children incarcerated together with their mothers. 34 children ranging in age between 2 and 4 years participated in this study together with their mothers. 17 of the children (10 girls and 7 boys) were incarcerated with their mothers and the other 17 children (9 girls and 8 boys) were not incarcerated and lived with their mothers in their homes. The incarcerated children were matched in demographic characteristics with non incarcerated children. The SON-R 2.5-7, an individual intelligence test for general application which does not require the use of spoken or written language was administered to measure the cognitive ability of the children. Qualitative data was also collected through informal discussions with the mothers and the prison warders on their perceptions on the cognitive ability of the children. A one way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was computed to find out if there was a significant difference between the means of the two groups i. e the incarcerated and the non-incarcerated children. The results indicated a significant difference in performance between the two groups, with the incarcerated children performing worse than the non incarcerated children. Implications of the findings are discussed in relation to the cognitive development of 'incarcerated' and non 'incarcerated' children.