Resumen

ROSSETTI-FERREIRA, Maria Clotilde. Interação entre fatores biológicos, socioeconômicos e culturais no desenvolvimento mental e desempenho escolar da criança desnutrida. Cad. Pesqui. [online]. 1979, n.29, pp.37-48. ISSN 0100-1574.

This paper suggests an explanation for the link between environment, malnutrition and rate of mental development. Its basic assumption is that biological factors, such as malnutrition or perinatal traumas, and difficult socioeconomic conditions interact to slow mental development by undermining the establishment and maintenance of a "syntonic","synchronic" and "reciprocal" relationship between the child and the mother. The family, in a deprived social environment, is usually burdened with socioeconomic and health problems. In these circumstances, the child will rarely find in its immediate environment a person available and prepared to "syntonize", i.e. to tune in to him, and to be stimulating and responsive to his behaviour. At the same time, children born in this environment, because of malnutrition and other aliments, will often be biologically less able to be stimulating and responsive to their caregivers. These children show apathy, irritability and a loss of interest in the social environment. Their behaviour is often more disorganized and less predictable than that of the controls, requiring a special effort from those who interact with them to achieve syntony and synchrony with them. The combination of these conditions, acting throughout the child's early years, creates a cycle of interactional deprivation, which inhibits its intellectual development. Could one predict this outcome for the enormous number of poor children who suffer malnutrition before and after birth.

Palabras clave : Cultura; Desenvolvimento cognitivo; Nutrição; Desenvolvimento da criança; Dados estatísticos; Relações sociais; Desnutrição; Rendimento escolar.

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