Individual differences in executive function partially explain the socioeconomic gradient in middle-school academic achievement.

ABSTRACT: Children from families with low socioeconomic status (SES) earn lower grades, perform worse on achievement tests, and attain less education on average than their peers from higher-SES families. We evaluated neurocognitive mediators of SES disparities in achievement in a diverse sample of youth whose data were linked to administrative records of performance on school-administered tests of 7th grade reading and math proficiency (N = 203). We used structural equation modeling to evaluate whether associations between SES (measured at ages 8-9) and achievement (measured at age 13) are mediated by verbal ability and executive function (measured at age 10), a suite of top-down mental processes that facilitate control of thinking and behavior. Children from relatively higher-SES families performed

SUBMITTER: Albert WD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7392118 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature