Socio-Demographic Characteristics: Barriers or Facilitators of Children’s Cognitive Development? Findings From a Longitudinal Pediatric Analysis

Background: Cognitive functions play a crucial role in children’s lives. This role is especially important during the transition from preschool to elementary school, as it assists children adapt to the new educational setting. Understanding factors that may exacerbate the development of cognitive functions during this transition can contribute to a successful transition to school. It also helps explain how the observed individual differences among children in schools are associated with varying levels of cognitive functions development. Aims: The first aim of this study is to monitor changes in children’s cognitive functions over two consecutive years. The second aim is to examine the contributions of gender, sibling position, and family composition to the development of these cognitive functions over time. Method: We sampled a group of children ( n = 333) from preschool and monitored them until the end of their first year of elementary school. Results: The results of a paired-samples t -test suggested that there is a significant difference in cognitive functions between preschool and school ages. Also, repeated measure analysis revealed that gender interacts with verbal working memory, indicating that boys exhibit greater increase in verbal working memory compared to girls. The same analysis suggested that sibling position interacts with visual working memory, with the oldest child showing greater overall growth in visual working memory than siblings in other positions. Conclusion: The findings provide evidence that not only time is a key factor in the overall growth of cognitive functions from preschool to the school period, but depending on the type of cognitive function, gender, and sibling position can also amplify or accelerate this growth over time.