A total of 356 children in low-income US families were randomised at a mean age of 4.5 to Head Start classrooms enriched with intensive social-emotional learning and language support, or to usual practice, and reassessed at ages 21 to 22. The intervention group scored better on 7 of 11 young-adult well-being measures, including loneliness, depressive symptoms, empathy, emotional support and life satisfaction, and the intervention weakened the association between adverse childhood experiences and social adjustment.
Why it is interesting: A randomised test of whether loneliness in early adulthood can be shifted by an intervention delivered some 17 years earlier, in a single trial of 356 children.