Executive functions (EFs) are foundational skills that predict academic success and develop rapidly between 3-6 years of age. By kindergarten entry, low socioeconomic status (SES) children have worse EF compared to their high SES peers. However, the nature and origins of these emerging performance gaps have not been systematically assessed. Further, little is known about the neural underpinnings of behavioral EF differences. This project assessed behavioral and neural EF measures in a socioeconomically diverse sample of children aged 4.5 to 5.5 years (N=121).
The aims were to examine (1) how SES relates to multiple dimensions of EF, (2) contextual factors that may buffer EF from the impact of SES, and (3) how SES relates to neural EF processing. In study 1, I hypothesized that lower SES children would have worse EF; would especially struggle on harder working memory trials; and would show a steeper decline in performance over time compared to higher SES peers. As hypothesized, lower SES related to overall poorer EF (inhibitory control and working memory tasks). Contrary to expectations, there were no SES differences on holding two items in working memory, but lower SES children had poorer accuracy than higher SES peers when asked to remember just one item. Further, all children’s accuracy declined over time, regardless of SES. Study 2 used a bioecological approach to assess factors that may buffer children from adverse consequences of SES on EF. As hypothesized, results suggest that neighborhood quality has a buffering effect, as there was no relation between SES and child EF in low chaos neighborhoods. In high chaos neighborhoods, lower SES related to poorer EF. Study 3 examined how specific aspects of SES related to electrophysiological EF processing. As hypothesized, on an inhibitory control task, higher household income related to larger P3b amplitudes, indexing inhibition and attention allocation processes. This suggests that children from higher income families may show more mature neural processing. Unexpectedly, parent education did not relate to P3b amplitudes. Taken together, results highlight the importance of using multi- method approaches at different levels of analysis to tease apart the complexity of SES-EF relations in early childhood.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/48613 |
| Date | 11 April 2024 |
| Creators | St. John, Ashley Moore |
| Contributors | Tarullo, Amanda R. |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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