A fourth limitation is that much of the
focus in the literature has been on child
aggressive behavior, whereas cognitive
developmental outcomes have received
less attention.16–18 Two studies have
examined spanking and cognitive outcomes
prospectively but only in very
young children. Berlin et al7 found links
between spanking and early child
Bayley scores in a large sample of lowincome
preschoolers and toddlers, and
MacKenzie et al10 found evidence of
associations between early spanking
and lower child vocabulary scores at
age 5.