Air date: June 27, 2010

Host: Jeremy Shere, PhD

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Did you Know? is presented by Wishard Health Services, becoming Eskenazi Health in 2014.

I'm Jeremy Shere.

Did you know that the quality of child care can have long-lasting impacts on kids' behavior?

According to a new study, kids who had high-quality child care as tots do better on academic tests and have fewer behavior problems at age 15.

So what constitutes "high quality" care?

The researchers looked mainly at how attentive caregivers were to children's needs. The more sensitive and responsive the caregivers, the better the quality of care.

The researchers followed 1,300 kids in 10 cities across the United States, beginning in 1991. By age 15, the children who'd received high quality care scored more than 5 points higher on average on standardized tests than kids who'd gotten lower quality care.

And now you know.

Additional Resources:

• Find details on the daycare-and-intelligence study at WebMD.