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Abstract The efficacy of early intervention programs for environmentally at-risk infants was examined using meta-analysis techniques. Questions relating to both short and long-term effectiveness and the influence of important variables such as age at which intervention begins, the relationship of parental involvement to intervention effectiveness, and the degree of structure in the intervention program were investigated. The analysis revealed that early intervention has an immediate positive effect of about one-half of a standard deviation. The analysis failed to find long-term benefits and failed to relate degree of parental involvement to intervention effectiveness. Some support was found for the notions that degree of structure and training of intervenor are positively related to effectiveness.
Casto et al. (Mon,) studied this question.