Agencia Andina highlights study by Niños del Milenio on the impact of JUNTOS on fundamental cognitive skills
Agencia de Noticias Andina highlighted the findings of a recent study by Douglas Scott, Jennifer López, Alan Sánchez y Jere Behrman, that explores the relevance of the age of initial exposure to the JUNTOS program in the development of a set of fundamental cognitive skills.
Using longitudinal data from Young Lives Peru, Scott et al. (2022) study the relationship between a child’s age of initiation into JUNTOS and the development of his or her foundational cognitive skills, and establish the specific age of the child at which being part of JUNTOS maximizes benefits in cognitive skills. They find that younger siblings benefiting from JUNTOS from an early age achieve significant improvements in inhibitory control skills-that is, the ability to focus on a specific task-compared to their older siblings who also benefitted. The key difference is that the former were more likely to start primary school at the right age. Age at program initiation is not observed to play a similar role in the other skills measured.
Download the study here.