IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0035744.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Social Disparity on Prefrontal Function in Childhood

Author

Listed:
  • Margaret A Sheridan
  • Khaled Sarsour
  • Douglas Jutte
  • Mark D'Esposito
  • W Thomas Boyce

Abstract

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) develops from birth through late adolescence. This extended developmental trajectory provides many opportunities for experience to shape the structure and function of the PFC. To date, a few studies have reported links between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and prefrontal function in childhood, raising the possibility that aspects of environment associated with SES impact prefrontal function. Considering that behavioral measures of prefrontal function are associated with learning across multiple domains, this is an important area of investigation. In this study, we used fMRI to replicate previous findings, demonstrating an association between parental SES and PFC function during childhood. In addition, we present two hypothetical mechanisms by which SES could come to affect PFC function of this association: language environment and stress reactivity. We measured language use in the home environment and change in salivary cortisol before and after fMRI scanning. Complexity of family language, but not the child's own language use, was associated with both parental SES and PFC activation. Change in salivary cortisol was also associated with both SES and PFC activation. These observed associations emphasize the importance of both enrichment and adversity-reduction interventions in creating good developmental environments for all children.

Suggested Citation

  • Margaret A Sheridan & Khaled Sarsour & Douglas Jutte & Mark D'Esposito & W Thomas Boyce, 2012. "The Impact of Social Disparity on Prefrontal Function in Childhood," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(4), pages 1-13, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0035744
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0035744
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0035744
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0035744&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0035744?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James J. Heckman, 2007. "The Economics, Technology and Neuroscience of Human Capability Formation," NBER Working Papers 13195, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Damien A Fair & Alexander L Cohen & Jonathan D Power & Nico U F Dosenbach & Jessica A Church & Francis M Miezin & Bradley L Schlaggar & Steven E Petersen, 2009. "Functional Brain Networks Develop from a “Local to Distributed” Organization," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(5), pages 1-14, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sanchez, Alan & Favara, Marta & Sheridan, Margaret & Behrman, Jere R., 2022. "How Early Nutrition and Foundational Cognitive Skills Interconnect? Evidence from Two Developing Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 15818, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Jedwab, Remi & Khan, Amjad M. & Russ, Jason & Zaveri, Esha D., 2021. "Epidemics, pandemics, and social conflict: Lessons from the past and possible scenarios for COVID-19," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    3. Nicolas Pazos & Marta Favara & Alan Sánchez & Douglas Scott & Jere Behrman, 2022. "Long-term effects of rainfall shocks on foundational cognitive skills: Evidence from Peru," PIER Working Paper Archive 23-001, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    4. Monica E. Ellwood-Lowe & Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli & Silvia A. Bunge, 2021. "Brain network coupling associated with cognitive performance varies as a function of a child’s environment in the ABCD study," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-14, December.
    5. Remi Jedwab & Amjad M. Khan & Richard Damania & Jason Russ & Esha D. Zaveri, 2020. "Pandemics, Poverty, and Social Cohesion: Lessons from the Past and Possible Solutions for COVID-19," Working Papers 2020-13, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    6. Bachler Egon & Nickel Marius & Bachler Herbert, 2018. "The Relationship between Peer Victimization, Perceived Parental Support, Family Characteristics and Internalizing Symptoms. A Cross-Sectional Study," The Open Family Studies Journal, Bentham Open, vol. 10(1), pages 9-20, April.
    7. Danielle Shaked & Zachary B Millman & Danielle L Beatty Moody & William F Rosenberger & Hui Shao & Leslie I Katzel & Christos Davatzikos & Rao P Gullapalli & Stephen L Seliger & Guray Erus & Michele K, 2019. "Sociodemographic disparities in corticolimbic structures," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-21, May.
    8. Evelyn Law & Georgios Sideridis & Ghadah Alkhadim & Jenna Snyder & Margaret Sheridan, 2022. "Classifying Young Children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Based on Child, Parent, and Family Characteristics: A Cross-Validation Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(15), pages 1-13, July.
    9. Wehby, George L. & McCarthy, Ann Marie, 2013. "Economic gradients in early child neurodevelopment: A multi-country study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 86-95.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Giacomo De Giorgi & Michele Pellizzari & William Gui Woolston, 2012. "Class Size And Class Heterogeneity," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 795-830, August.
    2. Lin, Dajun & Lutter, Randall & Ruhm, Christopher J., 2018. "Cognitive performance and labour market outcomes," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 121-135.
    3. Huang, Wei & Zhou, Yi, 2013. "Effects of education on cognition at older ages: Evidence from China's Great Famine," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 54-62.
    4. Holla,Alaka & Bendini,Maria Magdalena & Dinarte Diaz,Lelys Ileana & Trako,Iva, 2021. "Is Investment in Preprimary Education Too Low ? Lessons from (Quasi) ExperimentalEvidence across Countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9723, The World Bank.
    5. Maclean, Johanna Catherine & Popovici, Ioana & French, Michael T., 2016. "Are natural disasters in early childhood associated with mental health and substance use disorders as an adult?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 78-91.
    6. Yu, Linyue & Wilcox-Gök, Virginia, 2015. "The impact of maternal depression on children’s cognitive development: An analysis based on panel quantile regressions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 107-109.
    7. Khalil, Elias L., 2010. "The Bayesian fallacy: Distinguishing internal motivations and religious beliefs from other beliefs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 268-280, August.
    8. Arthi, Vellore & Parman, John, 2021. "Disease, downturns, and wellbeing: Economic history and the long-run impacts of COVID-19," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    9. Jonathan Colmer, 2013. "Climate Variability, Child Labour and Schooling: Evidence on the Intensive and Extensive Margin," GRI Working Papers 132, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    10. By Tyas Prevoo & Bas ter Weel, 2015. "The importance of early conscientiousness for socio-economic outcomes: evidence from the British Cohort Study," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 67(4), pages 918-948.
    11. Albanesi, Stefania & Olivetti, Claudia & Petrongolo, Barbara, 2022. "Families, labor markets and policy," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118038, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    12. Tia Palermo & Sudhanshu Handa & Amber Peterman & Leah Prencipe & David Seidenfeld, 2016. "Unconditional government social cash transfer in Africa does not increase fertility," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 29(4), pages 1083-1111, October.
    13. Alzúa, María Laura & Katzkowicz, Noemí, 2021. "Pay for performance for prenatal care and newborn health: Evidence from a developing country," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    14. Schultz-Nielsen, Marie Louise & Tekin, Erdal & Greve, Jane, 2016. "Labor market effects of intrauterine exposure to nutritional deficiency: Evidence from administrative data on Muslim immigrants in Denmark," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 196-209.
    15. Tim Lohse & Peter Lutz & Christian Thomann, 2013. "Redistributional consequences of early childhood intervention," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 14(3), pages 373-381, June.
    16. Orla Doyle & Nick Fitzpatrick & Judy Lovett & Caroline Rawdon, 2015. "Early intervention and child health: Evidence from a Dublin-based randomized controlled trial," Working Papers 201505, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    17. Nicolas Berman & Lorenzo Rotunno & Roberta Ziparo, 2020. "Sweet child of mine: Parental income, child health and inequality," AMSE Working Papers 2005, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France, revised Dec 2022.
    18. Sapovadia, Vrajlal, 2015. "Indian Manufacturing Sector: Competitiveness at Stake," MPRA Paper 68777, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Sarrias, Mauricio & Blanco, Alejandra, 2022. "Bodyweight and human capital development: Assessing the impact of obesity on socioemotional skills during childhood in Chile," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).
    20. Thompson, Owen, 2011. "Racial disparities in the cognition-health relationship," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 328-339, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0035744. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.