Socioeconomic status and functional brain development – associations in early infancy

Tomalski, Przemysław; Moore, David G.; Ribeiro, Helena; Axelsson, Emma; Murphy, Elizabeth; Karmiloff‐Smith, Annette; Johnson, Mark H.; Kushnerenko, Elena

doi:10.1111/desc.12079

Cited by 207 publications

(184 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Only in the case of maternal occupation did professional/managerial job status predict earlier sleep-onset time. These results are somewhat surprising given how early in life family SES has been shown to influence cognitive and brain development (Clearfield & Jedd, 2013;Hanson et al, 2013;Tomalski et al, 2013). While the literature is rather limited, this lack of SES effects is consistent with a previous lab-based study of a similar, albeit smaller sample (Tomalski et al, 2013) and with data from other populations (Bayer, Hiscock, Hampton, & Wake, 2007).…”

Section: Socio-economic Gradientssupporting

confidence: 71%

Separating the effects of ethnicity and socio-economic status on sleep practices of 6- to 7-month-old infants

Tomalski

Moore

Ballieux

et al. 2016

Learning and Individual Differences

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Infant sleep undergoes significant re-organization throughout the first 12 months of life, with sleep quality having significant consequences for infant learning and cognitive development. While there has been great interest in the neural basis and developmental trajectories of infant sleep in general, relatively little is known about individual differences in infant sleep and the socio-economic and cultural sources of that variability. We investigated this using questionnaire sleep data in a large, unique multi-ethnic sample of 6–7 month-olds (n = 174), with families from South Asian ethnic groups in the UK (Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) being especially well represented. Consistent with previous data from less variable samples, no effects of SES on sleep latency or nocturnal sleep duration emerged. However, perinatal risk factors and ethnic differences did predict daytime sleep, sleep fragmentation and sleep-onset time. While these results should be interpreted with caution due to several limitations, they likely demonstrate that even when socio-economic status and ethnicity are much less confounded than in previous studies, they have a surprisingly limited impact on individual differences in sleep patterns in young infants

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Section: Socio-economic Gradientssupporting

confidence: 71%

Separating the effects of ethnicity and socio-economic status on sleep practices of 6- to 7-month-old infants

Tomalski

Moore

Ballieux

et al. 2016

Learning and Individual Differences

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“…Six-to eight-month-old infants from low-income families exhibited reduced gamma band power in the frontal lobe compared to infants from high-income families, after controlling for several covariates such as exposure to smoke (Tomalski et al 2013). Reduced gamma power may be an early risk marker for poor attentional control and delayed language development, both of which are more prevalent in low SES children (Hackman and Farah 2009;Hoff 2006).…”

Section: Brain: Functionmentioning

confidence: 96%

How Socioeconomic Disadvantages Get Under the Skin and into the Brain to Influence Health Development Across the Lifespan

Kim

Evans

Chen

et al. 2017

Handbook of Life Course Health Development

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Socioeconomic disadvantage (SED) has adverse impacts on physical (Adler and Rehkopf 2008; Blair and Raver 2012; Braverman and Egerter 2008; Cohen et al. 2010; Poulton et al. 2002) and psychological (Adler and Rehkopf 2008; Bradley and Corwyn 2002; Grant et al. 2003) health development. SED is similar to low socioeconomic status (SES) which is based on occupation, income, and education or a composite of more than one of these indicators (McLoyd 1998). However, we conceptualize SED more broadly than socioeconomic status to also include subjective perception of social position and contextual indicators of disadvantage, such as neighborhood deprivation. One of the most commonly used SED indicators is poverty, which is calculated using income that falls below an annually adjusted federal poverty line. Some studies suggest independent effects of different SED variables, but each variable tends to be highly correlated with the others; thus, it is often nearly impossible to disentangle independent effects. Therefore, in this chapter, we will review findings on different SED variables but discuss the impact of SED inclusively. In adulthood, SED is assessed based on factors in an individual’s own background such as income, occupation, and education level, whereas in childhood, SED is typically assessed based on these factors for the parents.

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“…Disparities in SES have also been linked to differences in selective attention to speech, with children from low-SES families showing reduced ability to filter out irrelevant sound streams as well as a reduced response to attended sounds (D'Angiulli, Herdman, Stapells, and Hertzman, 2008;Kaldy & Blaser, 2013). SES-related differences in frontal gamma power have also been identified in infants as young as six months of age (Tomalski et al, 2013).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Applying gaze-contingent training within community settings to infants from diverse SES backgrounds

Ballieux

Wass

Tomalski

et al. 2016

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology

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Even in infancy children from low SES backgrounds differ in frontal cortex functioning and, by the start of pre-school, they frequently show poor performance on executive functions including attention control. These differences may causally mediate later difficulties in academic learning. Here, we present a study to assess the feasibility of using computerized paradigms to train attention control in infants, delivered weekly over five sessions in early intervention centres for low-SES families. Thirty-three 12-month-old infants were recruited, of whom 23 completed the training. Our results showed the feasibility of repeat-visit cognitive training within community settings. Training-related improvements were found, relative to active controls, on tasks assessing visual sustained attention, saccadic reaction time, and rule learning, while trend improvements were found on assessments of short-term memory. No significant improvements were found in task switching. These results warrant further investigation into the potential of this method for targeting 'at-risk' infants in community settings.

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Socioeconomic status and functional brain development – associations in early infancy

Cited by 207 publications

References 49 publications

Separating the effects of ethnicity and socio-economic status on sleep practices of 6- to 7-month-old infants

Separating the effects of ethnicity and socio-economic status on sleep practices of 6- to 7-month-old infants

How Socioeconomic Disadvantages Get Under the Skin and into the Brain to Influence Health Development Across the Lifespan

Applying gaze-contingent training within community settings to infants from diverse SES backgrounds

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