Maximizing research on the adverse effects of child poverty through consensus measures

Pollak, Seth D.; Wolfe, Barbara

doi:10.1111/desc.12946

Cited by 28 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…We used parental education as our measure of SES, since parental education is considered the strongest predictor of academic achievement. Recent efforts emphasize the need to use a consistent and comprehensive measure of SES (Pollak & Wolfe, 2020), and our results should also be confirmed using a wider range of SES indicators, including income and occupation. Using a less restricted and a more comprehensive SES measure might lead to stronger effects than the ones observed in the current study.…”

Section: Parental Ses Moderates the Relations Between Reasoning Skill And Spatial Neurocognitive Systems That Underlie Reasoningsupporting

confidence: 56%

Neurocognitive basis of deductive reasoning in children varies with parental education

Demir-Lira

Prado

Booth

2021

Human Brain Mapping

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The neurocognitive basis of elementary academic skills varies with parental socioeconomic status (SES). Little is known, however, about SES-related differences underlying higher-order cognitive skills that are critical for school success, such as reasoning.Here we used fMRI to examine how the neurocognitive basis of deductive reasoning varies as a function of parental education in school-aged children. Higher parental education was associated with greater reliance on the left inferior frontal gyrus when solving set-inclusion problems, consistent with other work suggesting that these problems might more heavily rely on verbal systems in the brain. In addition, children who are at the lower end of the parental education continuum, but have higher nonverbal skills relied on right parietal areas to a greater degree than their peers for solving set-inclusion problems. Finally, lower parental education children with higher verbal or nonverbal skill engaged dorsolateral prefrontal regions to a greater degree for set-inclusion and linear-order relations than their peers. These findings suggest that children with lower parental education rely on spatial and cognitive control mechanisms to achieve parity with their peers with parents who have more education. Better understanding variability in the neurocognitive networks that children recruit as a function of their parental factors might benefit future individualized interventions that best match children's characteristics.

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Section: Parental Ses Moderates the Relations Between Reasoning Skill And Spatial Neurocognitive Systems That Underlie Reasoningsupporting

confidence: 56%

Neurocognitive basis of deductive reasoning in children varies with parental education

Demir-Lira

Prado

Booth

2021

Human Brain Mapping

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“…While our study benefited from the ABCD dataset's rich objective measures of a child's environment, there are other potential environmental and individual level variables that should be considered in future research (Bates et al, 2018;Merz, Wiltshire, et al, 2019;Pollak & Wolfe, 2020). Future research could also benefit from a more sensitive measure of poverty.…”

Section: To Better Characterize the Positive Relation Between Lfpn-dmmentioning

confidence: 99%

What is an adaptive pattern of brain network coupling for a child? It depends on their environment

Ellwood-Lowe

Whitfield-Gabrieli

Bunge

2020

Preprint

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Key words: brain development | cognitive | brain networks | functional connectivity | adaptation | resilience | environment | poverty | socioeconomic status Acknowledgements: This study would not be possible without the massive efforts of the large team of ABCD leaders and organizers, staff and data curators, and families and children who participated. Abstract. 1Prior fMRI research indicates that lower resting-state functional connectivity between 2 two specific brain networks is linked to better cognitive test performance in children and 3adults. However, most study samples are skewed towards higher-socioeconomic status 4individualsand what is adaptive for one population may not be for another. In a pre-5registered study, we analyzed resting-state fMRI data from 6839 children ages 9-10 6 years. For children above the federal poverty line, we replicated the prior finding: better 7 cognitive performance was related to weaker connectivity between the lateral 8 frontoparietal and default mode networks. However, for children living in poverty, this 9relation trended in the opposite direction. Follow-up cross-validated predictive analyses 10 revealed that these results were driven by several key features of a child's environment. 11Thus, "optimal" brain function depends in part on the external pressures children face, 12highlighting the need for more diverse samples in research on the human brain and 13behavior. 14 15 16

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“…It is often difficult to compare studies on the effects of poverty on child development. This is because of the wide and inconsistent range of variables that researchers use to define their samples (Pollak & Wolfe, In press). As we will explain below, among researchers there is no single measure of what constitutes poverty.…”

Section: Setting the Context: What Do We Mean By Poverty And Socioecomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Operationally defining poverty – especially in a global context – is a complex issue (Pollak & Wolfe, In press). Much has been published about what constitutes poverty, how to define it, and how to measure it (Institute for Research on Poverty, 2016; Short, 2016).…”

Section: Setting the Context: What Do We Mean By Poverty And Socioecomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, parent education, alone, provides little precision or insight into how children experience poverty (Duncan & Magnuson, 2012). Moreover, parental education is more a measure of SES, which is a different construct from poverty or family income (Pollak & Wolfe, In press). It is not yet clear whether low family income has the similar developmental effects on children as low family SES (Hackman, Farah, Meaney, 2010).…”

Section: Setting the Context: What Do We Mean By Poverty And Socioecomentioning

confidence: 99%

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How developmental neuroscience can help address the problem of child poverty

Pollak

Wolfe

2020

Dev Psychopathol

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Nearly 1 in 5 children in the United States lives in a household whose income is below the official federal poverty line, and more than 40% of children live in poor or near-poor households. Research on the effects of poverty on children's development has been a focus of study for many decades and is now increasing as we accumulate more evidence about the implications of poverty. The American Academy of Pediatrics recently added “Poverty and Child Health” to its Agenda for Children to recognize what has now been established as broad and enduring effects of poverty on child development. A recent addition to the field has been the application of neuroscience-based methods. Various techniques including neuroimaging, neuroendocrinology, cognitive psychophysiology, and epigenetics are beginning to document ways in which early experiences of living in poverty affect infant brain development. We discuss whether there are truly worthwhile reasons for adding neuroscience and related biological methods to study child poverty, and how might these perspectives help guide developmentally based and targeted interventions and policies for these children and their families.

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Maximizing research on the adverse effects of child poverty through consensus measures

Cited by 28 publications

References 59 publications

Neurocognitive basis of deductive reasoning in children varies with parental education

Neurocognitive basis of deductive reasoning in children varies with parental education

What is an adaptive pattern of brain network coupling for a child? It depends on their environment

How developmental neuroscience can help address the problem of child poverty

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