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Information from birth certificates (including race, birth order and weight, and maternal age and education) was used to develop a set of classification equations to predict the educational status of first-grade children. The equations were developed with one-half of the sample and then applied to the other half in a replication test. The equations accurately identified approximately 80 percent of the children who scored 1 standard deviation or more below the mean on both a measure of intellectual competence and a measure of adaptive behavior. The usefulness of birth certificates as a first-line screening method was discussed.

The major hypothesis in the present study was that differences between high-risk and low-risk children in performance on standardized tests of cognitive ability would be explained, in part, by differences in attentiveness to auditory stimuli and differences in task orientation. The data collected revealed the anticipated higher standardized test scores for low-risk children. Within the high-risk sample, few differences were found between children who attended an intervention day-care program and those who did not. Measures from a laboratory task and a free-play observation suggested that attention is a key factor in understanding the high-risk child's development and also that differences in attention between high- and low-risk children can be reliably obtained as early as 3 years of age. A lessened attention span was demonstrated by high-risk children to both auditory and visual stimuli if either were complex or demanding.