After attending a rural compensatory preschool for 5 half days a week over 1 year, Australian black and white children showed substantial gains on tests of vocabulary, auditory association, grammatic closure, and operational thinking. Tests repeated 8 months later when the children were at primary school showed marked erosion on auditory association and grammatic closure but little erosion on vocabulary or operational thinking. Scores of the black children tended to erode more than scores of the white children. The erosion was attributed to failure to correct life style deficits.
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