Abandoned children who are put into foster care seem to have better reasoning, language and other intellectual skills than those who remained in orphanages, a recent study revealed on Thursday.

The study, led by U.S. researchers from Harvard Medical School, seems to be one of the first scientific investigations of the impact of foster care on a child’s developing brain. The research, began in Romania’s capital of Bucharest in 2000, illustrates that children placed in foster families rather than orphanages develop significantly higher intelligence quotients of IQ’s by age 4. Romania had no foster-care system in 2000 when the research began. The study involved 136 children all less than 31 months that were living in six institutions. The children were all healthy.

"What we're really talking about is the importance of getting kids out of bad environments and put into good environments," said Dr. Charles Nelson III of Harvard Medical School, leader of the study.

The study reveals that foster children scored an average of 81 on IQ tests taken at 54 months compared to 73 among the children who were cared for at an institution. Youngsters who grow up in their biological families have an average IQ of 109, nearly 10 points higher than children who have lived in an orphanage. Such a boost could mean for some children the difference between borderline retardation and average intelligence.

The most important discovery of the study is that children removed from orphanages before age 2 showed the biggest improvement. Researchers say that the longer the children stayed in the institution, the worse their IQ became.

"The research provides concrete scientific evidence on the long-term impacts of the deprivation of quality care for children. The interesting part about this is the one-on-one caring of a young child impacts ... cognitive and intellectual development," UNICEF child protection specialist Aaron Greenberg said.

Previous studies carried out on children abandoned in orphanages during Romania’s communist-era revealed that both physical and emotional effects but little was known about the intellectual damage inflicted.

Dr. Nelson said the study would serve to guide policy in other countries with large populations of abandoned children.

The study, funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, is published in today’s issue of the journal Science.