Lecture 6: SES and Development

Question 1

Learning Objectives:

Answer 1

Part 1: Introduction to socioeconomic Status (SES)

Part 2: Links between SES and cognition

Part 3: Links between SES and maths skills

Part 4: Why are the links there?

1. Describe how SES is measured.
2. Explain the associations between SES and cognitive development.
3. Explain the associations between SES and maths skills.
4. Discuss different accounts for why and how SES may affect children’s development.

Question 2

1: Introduction to SES

What is SES?

Answer 2

Definition: Socioeconomic status, or SES, is a measure of a person’s economic and social position in relation to others.

SES refers to one’s access to economic and social resources and the social positioning, privileges, and prestige that derive from these resources

It is not a single variable!

Question 3

1: Introduction to SES

How is SES measured?

Answer 3

The effects of SES are indirect and accrue over time…because of this, the best measures of SES use a composite score derived from multiple factors e.g.

• parental education
• parental income
• family income
• neighbourhood deprivation

In the UK, we can get a comprehensive index of neighbourhood SES from postcode based on a government data tool known as the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD).

This considers neighbourhood characteristics including the average income and employment level of an area.

Question 4

1: Introduction to SES

How might SES affect outcomes?

Answer 4

SES is thought to operate at multiple levels to affect outcomes in childhood (Adler et al., 1999).

Social capital - beneficial connection in social networks e.g. family friends providing internships

Human capital - skills or knowledge of individuals e.g. parents education that is passed on

Access to opportunities - money enables opportunities (books, extracurriculars - greater learning potential)

Question 5

1: Introduction to SES

Important note:

Answer 5

One thing to bear in mind when we look at this topic is that the results we will be looking at are trends over large groups of children (i.e., correlations).

There are of course sensitive, consistent parents with well-prepared children in low SES homes. Furthermore, children can also show high levels of resilience.

Therefore, it’s very important to avoid stereotyping and also having low expectations.
But these trends are well established and we need to know why they arise.

Question 6

2: Links between SES and cognition

SES and cognitive development

Answer 6

Farah et al. (2006) studied a group of children from low-SES households and a group of children from mid-SES households.

They found low SES children did poorer in three main areas of cognition:

• Language
• Memory
• Executive functions

Question 7

2: Links between SES and cognition

What are executive functions?

Answer 7

The high-level cognitive skills that are involved in goal-directed thinking.

They include skills like working memory and the ability to suppress attention to distracting information (inhibitory control).

Question 8

2: Links between SES and cognition

Findings of Farah et al 2006

Answer 8

There was one interesting and unexpected finding from this work…

Prior research suggests that the ability to resist impulse and appreciate the value of future rewards does increase with SES (Banfield, 1968) – in other words, lower SES children are more impulsive with rewards (will take a small reward now over waiting for a bigger reward) e.g. marshmallow task

But actually, Farah et al find no effect of SES on early reward processing

Farah et al suggest that this correlation between resisting impulses and SES emerges later in childhood.

This effect may therefore occur as a pragmatic adaptation to the contingencies learnt over time, rather than as a direct result of SES influencing reward processing.

Question 9

2: Links between SES and cognition

SES and executive functions

Answer 9

Many studies report that lower SES children tend to have poorer language and executive function skills (working memory and inhibitory control) (see also Hackman & Farah, 2009).

Executive functions are important for early maths (Cragg & Gilmore, 2014) - these cognitive skills are important for thinking about numbers and solving maths problems.

Therefore - it is possible that individual differences in executive functions can account for SES based differences in children’s maths skills.

Question 10

3: Links between SES and maths skills

Pre-existing differences at school entry

Answer 10

Lower SES kids begin school < maths knowledge than preschoolers from higher SES families

So, kids from lower SES families often arrive in school less well prepared to learn, placing them at long-term academic risk

? due to having less exposure to numbers - knock on effect on later skills as maths learning is incremental

Question 11

3: Links between SES and maths skills

The educational inequalities associated with low SES begin early in life

Answer 11

Cross-cultural research on early maths development in China, Japan, and the US found an SES-related gap in early maths knowledge at age 3 years in all three countries - suggests that the variables linking SES to maths skills are present early in life.

Question 12

3: Links between SES and maths skills

Gap widens with time

Answer 12

The achievement gap at school entry persists over time, and furthermore, become more pronounced with development.

Rathbun and West (2004) found a maths achievement gap at school entry between lower + higher SES children but also found that this gap widened over the first 4 years of primary school.

Mathematics is a subject in which early skills set a foundation for more advanced concepts which may explain why gaps widen with time.

Question 13

3: Links between SES and maths skills

The maths gap between low and high SES kids appears to be a linear relationship

Answer 13

• For maths the gap between the lowest and highest SES group are roughly twice as large as the bottom and middle SES group (see figure ).
• This suggests a fairly linear SES ‘gradient’ for maths

Question 14

3: Links between SES and maths skills

Pathways via cognition

Answer 14

The SES achievement gap in maths may initially lead us to think there is a direct link between SES and maths skills

However, differences in executive function may explain this link between SES and maths skills (mediational factor - could explain the relationship between SES and maths skills

Question 15

3: Links between SES and maths skills

Executive functions and early maths skills

Answer 15

There were six birds in a tree. Three birds already flew away. How many birds were there from the start?”

To solve this problem, you need:
• Working memory to comprehend the word problem and keep track of the information.
• Inhibitory control to suppress the tendency to subtract immediately when you hear the phrase ‘flew away.’ Also ignoring extraneous information e.g., that the birds are in a tree.

Question 16

4: Why are the links there?

Answer 16

Differences in parenting styles?
Differences in what parents can invest?
Differences in stress?

Question 17

4: Why are the links there?

Differences in parenting styles

Answer 17

Lareau (2002) studied 88 families in detail from diverse SES backgrounds using observations and interviews.

Two broad parenting styles that differed by SES:

• Higher SES parents engaged in ‘concerted cultivation’: deliberate, sustained effort to stimulate children’s development and cultivate cognitive skills.
• Lower-mid and low SES parents engaged in ‘natural growth’: not trying to develop special talents but instead seeing development as spontaneously unfolding as long as children are provided love, support, comfort and food

SES-related differences in family activities and communication styles:

• Higher SES parents were more likely to have enrolled their children in a variety of organised extra curricular activities.
  They also engaged in more negotiation/reasoning with their children.
• lower-mid and lower SES families participated in fewer organised activities, had more free time, and richer/deeper connections with extended family. They also gave more direct instructions and children rarely questioned adults.

SUMMARY IN NOTES

Question 18

4: Why are the links there?

Accounts to explain

Answer 18

There are two main accounts explaining the link between SES and cognitive development. Each one places a different emphasis on a particular mechanism:

1. The Investment Model
2. The Stress Model

These theories are not mutually exclusive

Question 19

4: Why are the links there?

Investment Model

Answer 19

Investment Model: Lower SES parents have less capital (resources, assets) so are unable to invest as much in their children.

1. Cognitive Stimulation. Lower SES children tend to receive less cognitive stimulation: they are read to less often, watch more television, and attend lower quality day care (Evans, 2004).
2. Resources. Higher SES parents are more likely to buy games or materials targeting academic skills for their children (e.g., shapes and colours) and the availability of these resources in the home predicts early math scores
3. Tools for maths thinking. Higher SES parents tend to use more language involving numbers.

All of these things could be a product of having less time, money and/or knowledge of what areas to focus on in terms of learning.

• **SES differences in home activities:
• Starkey et al. (1999) asked lower-SES and mid-SES parents about the nature and frequency of maths activities they provided for their 4-year-old children. There were considerable differences in the home maths practices reported by parents that were SES related.
• In general, mid-SES parents were more likely to have a range of maths activities (e.g., games, toys, computer software) in the home that were broader and played with more frequently than lower-SES parents.

***Differences in maths home activities predict maths skills:

Blevins-Knabe & Musun-Miller (1996):
Investigated the relation between parents’ maths practices and their child’s maths skills (in 4- to 6-year-olds).
The frequency with which children engaged in number-related activities at home the previous week (e.g., number matching tasks like: ‘give everyone 2 cookies’) was positively correlated with their maths skills.

Maths activities in the home predict maths skills over time:
Parental practices early in development predict maths skills longitudinally (in other words, over time): Number talk at home at age 2 predicts maths skills at age 4

Question 20

4: Why are the links there?

Stress Model

Answer 20

Stress Model: Lower SES leads to long-term stress which has negative consequences biologically and can make parents less effective.

DIAGRAM
The model tends to explain chronic stress - persists “abnormally” or that lasts for a long time, either because it occurs repeatedly or episodically, continuously, or because it poses severe threats that are not easily adapted or overcome. This tends to be the case in extreme cases of poverty

***Direct Effects on Cog Development

• Chronic stress in early development has a long-term negative effect on brain development which leads to poorer cognition.
• Stress influences the reactivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis (system that responds to
  stress and produces cortisol) affecting behaviour regulation and affecting brain areas such as the prefrontal cortex which underpins executive functions
• In low-resource, unpredictable environments, stress response systems develop in a way that promotes reactive rather than reflective self-regulation
• The longer children live in stressful conditions the more this will effect their bodily response to stress.
• Children will have a higher basal rate of cortisol and a more muted reaction to a standard stressor
• The effect of chronic stress in early childhood has effects on executive function development over time.

For example, high salivary cortisol at 7, 15, and 24 months was uniquely associated with lower executive functions at age 3. Cortisol levels are measured in response to a mildly stressful task such as removing the child’s toy or restraining them from reaching towards an attractive toy.

Stress directly affects the formation of new memories, particularly memories not associated with the stress episode.

For example, if a child is bullied on the way to school they will remember that episode clearly but their memories for the rest of the day will be less clear.

Remarkably, this is true if they are bullied on the way home from school – stress has a cost to memories formed hours earlier – can act retroactively

An extreme example of the way stress affects children (not directly related to SES but to illustrate): children score lower on academic tests in school if there is a murder in their neighbourhood less than one week before (Sharkey, 2010).

***Indirect effects of stress through parenting:

• Stress can affect cognition indirectly via more harsh and inconsistent parenting.
• Stress makes it harder to regulate your emotions and behaviour.
• The effect of parenting on children’s executive functions has been found to be linked via cortisol.

Parents can teach children tools for regulating their behaviour

Question 21

4: Why are the links there?

Positive note…

Answer 21

Nurturing parenting can reverse these effects:

• One study looked at foster children who had dysfunctional stress activity in their HPA axis (the bodily structure that responds to stress) related to adverse life events.
• Following a parental intervention designed to help parents identify distress and respond to this in a sensitive way, children had reduced HPA activity 9 months later

Question 22

Summary:

Answer 22

• SES is not a single variable but represents many variables that describe a person’s social and economic standing relative to others.
• The Investment Model and the Stress Model are not mutually exclusive: SES is unlikely to influence cognitive development via just one process.
• Both models may explain the effects of SES on maths skills because lower SES households tend to have fewer resources, fewer opportunities for learning and greater stress - these factors associated with low SES co-vary.
• These myriad of factors may either directly or indirectly impact cognitive development and therefore lead to poorer maths outcomes contributing to the achievement gap.