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The purpose of this study was to examine environmental influences on perceptual and motor skills of children from immigrant Ethiopian families in Israel in comparison with those of Israeli-born children. The subjects were divided into groups based on age (6- to 8-yr.-olds and 10- to 12-yr.-olds) and length of time in Israel. The results of this study show that the perceptual and motor performance of 6- to 8-yr.-old, less recent Ethiopian immigrants is similar to that of the recent Ethiopian immigrants of the same age. A difference exists between those two groups and the Israeli-born children of the same age. In the 10- to 12-yr.-old age group, there is a marked difference between the performance of the two groups of Ethiopian immigrants. The difference between the less recent immigrants and the Israeli-born children is smaller for most tasks; however, the less recent immigrants' performance is still poorer than that of the Israeli children. These results are compatible with those of other studies describing the difficulties encountered by children who had not studied in formal educational settings and those who have had that experience.

Objective: This study examined the long-term effect of an early prevention program on mothers' knowledge, attitudes, and practices with regard to their children's development. The prevention program focused on increasing the mothers' sensitivity to their children's needs and their awareness of the importance of their role in their children's early development., Method: Fifty-five mothers and their infants received approximately .5 hours of intervention once every 8 weeks during the infants' first year of life. A control group of 54 mothers and their infants did not receive the intervention. Subjects' knowledge of their children's sensory, motor, and language abilities; their beliefs in their ability to influence their children's development; and an indication of whether they implemented their knowledge were all measured with the Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices Questionnaire (KAP) 1.5 years to 2 years after completion of the prevention program., Results: KAP scores of the intervention group were higher than the scores of the control group, suggesting that the prevention program helped mothers acquire greater knowledge and more appropriate attitudes and practices about child development., Conclusion: This study supports the theory that the effect of a primary prevention program during the first year of a child's life can be sustained for 1 year to 2 years.