Tip sheets for parents, training materials for child care providers, public awareness campaigns, conferences on brain development, and recommendations for policy makers are just part of this project. Such parents may schedule a developmental assessment of their child to determine the child's strengths and areas of concern that intervention might be able to address. Terms Frequently Used in Developmental Assessment. Parents and experts have long known that babies raised by caring adults in safe and stimulating environments are better learners than those raised in less stimulating settings. The number of synapses increases 20-fold, from 50 trillion to 1,000 trillion in the months after birth.
Brain development is extremely susceptible to environmental influence.
The quality and variety of the physical environment are very important. Studies of children raised in poor environments show that they have cognitive deficits of substantial magnitude by 18 months of age. Full reversal of these deficits may not be possible. The influence of early environment on brain development is long lasting. The first group demonstrated significantly more complex brain function at age 12.