Parents of school age internationally adopted post-institutionalized children sometimes express their concerns and frustrations over the slower than expected academic progress of their children in school. After an initial phase of seemingly fast new language acquisition and adjustment to their new homes and schools, some of these children may show significant difficulty in their academic work (which, in turn, often brings behavioral and emotional problems). Their learning difficulties may persist and even worsen, well after the time when their academic problems may be attributed to bilingual and adjustment issues. Moreover, as they progress through the developmental stages and school grades, they seem to fall farther and farther behind in their performance on academic tasks and cognitive tests. What happens even more often, the overall dynamic of cognitive and language development and performance of some internationally adopted children fails to match the comprehensive and relentless efforts of their adoptive parents and professionals in different fields.
These children may experience what is known as the "Cumulative Cognitive Deficit" (CCD) - a term coined by a psychologist, M. Deutsch in the 1960s, CCD refers to a downward trend in the measured intelligence or scholastic achievement of culturally/socially disadvantaged children relative to age-appropriate societal norms and expectations.
The theory behind cumulative deficit is that children who are deprived of enriching cognitive experiences during their early years are less able to profit from environmental situation because of a mismatch between their cognitive structural maturity and the requirements of the new, more advanced learning situation. According to current research, there are several major characteristics of CCD:
1. Cognitive language deficiency that blocks cognitive processing.
2. Lack of age-appropriate cognitive skills, which results in progressive cognitive/behavioral incompetence.
3. Insufficient task-intrinsic motivation in cognitive activities, which may appear as an attention and memory problem.
4. Chronic mismatch between the child’s learning capacity and his/her academic placement, teaching style, and level of instruction.
CCD is usually associated with certain emotional/behavioral problems. Constant failure in cognitive activities feeds upon itself in a negative spiraling fashion which results in low self-esteem, lack of interest in and constant frustration associated with cognitive efforts. Lack of intrinsic motivation in cognitive activities grows with age and becomes one of the major characteristics of CCD.
The causes, nature, and dynamic of CCD in internationally adopted children are in many ways akin to the same phenomenon in the general population. It looks as if the child is "racing against time" being unable to catch up with age-appropriate academic standards. Because of the discrepancy between steadily rising academic requirements and relatively slow cognitive/language progress in some of the internationally adopted children, the overall trend appears to be a "downward" one. Resembling the population at large in its nature and dynamic of development, the CCD in internationally adopted children has the following specific features:
