When babies in orphanages, for example, are kept in cribs and only provided with food but not one-on-one smiles and hugs, they develop long-lasting developmental problems. One study of Romanian orphans by Mary Carlson, a neurobiologist at Harvard Medical School, concluded that the lack of touching and attention in Romanian orphanages and poor-quality day care centers stunted the children’s growth and adversely affected their behavior. Carlson, who studied sixty Romanian children from a few months to three years of age, measured their cortisol levels by analyzing samples of saliva. The more
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