Socioeconomic status and the developing brain

By Daniel A. Hackman, Martha J. Farah. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2009

1,508 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with cognitive achievement throughout life. How does SES relate to brain development, and what are the mechanisms by which SES might exert its influence? We review studies in which behavioral, electrophysio-logical and neuroimaging methods have been used to characterize SES disparities in neurocognitive function. These studies indicate that SES is an important predictor of neurocognitive performance, particularly of language and executive function, and that SES differences are found in neural processing even when performance levels are equal. Implications for basic cognitive neuroscience and for understanding and ameliorating the problems related to childhood poverty are discussed.

Subfields: Behavioral Neuroscience, Clinical Psychology, Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/30d7a149181a47e2838681b266188c58cdc0f78c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Behavioral Neuroscience

In Clinical Psychology

In Education

Citations in the corpus

Two-Year Impact of a Mindfulness-Based Program on Preschoolers’ Self-Regulation and Academic Performance (2016, background): “In particular, students from low-income families tend to exhibit poorer executive functions (Hackman & Farah, 2008), so perhaps children in the current study were more readily impacted by the mindfulness practices.”
Academic Interventions for Elementary and Middle School Students With Low Socioeconomic Status: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (2017, background): “In addition, early childhood poverty is a better predictor of later cognitive achievement than poverty in middle or late childhood (Hackman & Farah, 2009).”
Supermarket Speak: Increasing Talk Among Low-Socioeconomic Status (2015, background): “In addition to these well-documented effects of SES on language development, there is also neuroscientific evidence that provides an underlying mechanism for these differences (see Hackman & Farah, 2009, for review).”
Childhood Adversity and Neural Development: Deprivation and Threat as Distinct Dimensions of Early Experience (2014, neutral): “A small but rapidly growing body of work has begun o examine the impact of childhood adversity on neural developent (Hackman and Farah, 2009; Hart and Rubia, 2012).”
Putting Students on the Path to Learning: The Case for Fully Guided Instruction. (2012, background): “These are parts of the brain that support working memory, long-term memory, spatial processing, and pattern recognition.(69) These findings showing brain changes associated with chronic stress are important because they suggest a possible mechanism by which stress may lead to differences in cognitio”
Spatial ability for STEM domains: Aligning over 50 years of cumulative psychological knowledge solidifies its importance. (2009, neutral): “…a number of recent investigations (Alexander & Son, 2007; Bergemann et al., 2008; Chabris & Glickman, 2006; Ehrlich, Levine, & Goldin-Meadow, 2006; Hackman & Farah, 2009; Newcombe & Uttal, 2006; Noble, McCandliss, & Farah, 2007; Penner & Paret, 2008; Silverman, Choi, & Peters, 2007) as…”
The Mediating Role of Heart Rate on the Social Adversity-Antisocial Behavior Relationship (2015, background): “Environmental risk factors such as lower socioeconomic status and child neglect have been associated with changes in the functioning of physiological stress response systems (Ellis and Boyce 2008; Glaser 2000; Hackman and Farah 2009).”
Psychological Perspectives on Pathways Linking Socioeconomic Status and Physical Health (2011, background): “These areas include the hippocampus, hypothalamus, and prefrontal cortex and their subunits (Hackman & Farah 2009).”
Family Income, Parental Education and Brain Structure in Children and Adolescents (2015, neutral): “” Nature neuroscience 18 (5): 773-778.”
Investigating gender differences in reading (2010, background): “Children from advantaged and disadvantaged areas differ most markedly in their language ability (Hackman and Farah 2009 ).”
A Pilot Study of Contemplative Practices with Economically Disadvantaged Preschoolers: Children’s Empathic and Self-Regulatory Behaviors (2016, background): “Improvements in attentional focus and self-regulation are especially critical for low-income preschoolers, who on average exhibit lower inhibitory control, less optimal executive functions, and more behavior problems than children from middle-class families (Hackman and Farah 2009; Moilanen et al. 2”