Brain lateralization of phonological awareness varies by maternal education

Abstract

Socioeconomic status (SES) has been shown to influence language skills, with children of lower SES backgrounds performing worse on language assessments compared to their higher SES peers. While there is abundant behavioral research on the effects of SES, whether there are differences in the neural mechanisms used to support language skill is less established. In this study, we examined the relation between maternal education (ME), a component of SES, and neural mechanisms of language. We focused on Kindergarten children, at the beginning of formal reading education, and on a pre‐reading skill, phonological awareness—the ability to distinguish or manipulate the sounds of language. We determined ME‐related differences in neural activity by examining a skill‐matched sample of typically achieving 5‐year‐old children as they performed a rhyme judgment task. We examined brain lateralization in two language processing regions, the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and superior temporal gyrus (STG). In the IFG, lateralization was related to ME but not skill: children with low ME showed bilateral activation compared to children with higher ME who showed leftward lateralization. In the STG, there was a skill by ME interaction on lateralization, such that children with high ME showed a positive relation between rightward lateralization and skill and children with low ME showed a positive relation between leftward lateralization and skill. Thus, we demonstrated ME is related to differences in neural recruitment during language processing, yet this difference in recruitment is not indicative of a deficit in linguistic processing in Kindergarten children.

Neurocognitive basis of deductive reasoning in children varies with parental education

“…This finding is consistent with our prediction and prior work that showing significant and pronounced SES-related differences in verbal processing (e.g., Demir et al, 2015;Noble, Norman, & Farah, 2005). Previous neuroimaging studies suggest that the neural basis of verbal processing, specifically the left IFG, is more specialized in higher SES children (Hackman & Farah, 2009;Raizada et al, 2008;Younger et al, 2019). Children's early experiences might account for the observed differences underlying reasoning.…”

“…Functional neuroimaging studies using language tasks reveal similar SES-related differences (Romeo et al, 2018;Younger, Lee, Demir-Lira, & Booth, 2019). For example, Raizada, Richards, Meltzoff, and Kuhl (2008) found that the asymmetry in the activity of the left perisylvian regions during a rhyming task-related to the maturation of language processing-was less pronounced in children from disadvantaged SES backgrounds compared with those from more advantaged SES backgrounds.…”

Letter fluency in 7-8-year-old children is related to the anterior, but not posterior, ventral occipito-temporal cortex during an auditory phonological task

“… Tong et al (2016) showed that selecting the top activated voxels for each individual within an anatomical ROI as compared to other methods was more sensitive in finding group differences. In addition to our current study, several previous studies have also used this approach to examine brain-behavioral correlations ( Suárez‐Pellicioni and Booth, 2018 ; Younger et al, 2019 ; Wang et al, 2020 ).…”

Parent Language Input Prior to School Forecasts Change in Children’s Language-Related Cortical Structures During Mid-Adolescence

“…For example, SES disadvantage has been associated with reduced volume (e.g., Jednoróg et al, 2012 ; Hair et al, 2015 ), thickness ( Mackey et al, 2015 ), and surface area ( Noble et al, 2015 ) in cortical regions underlying language comprehension, including perisylvian areas (e.g., STG) and ventrolateral prefrontal areas (e.g., IFG; Noble et al, 2012 ; Piccolo et al, 2016 ). SES-related differences are also observed in white matter structures, and in functional brain systems, involved in language processing ( Raizada et al, 2008 ; Gullick et al, 2016 ; Younger et al, 2019 ). However, parental SES is a complex construct of many components (e.g., parental income, education, and neighborhood characteristics).…”