Socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with childhood cognitive achievement. In previous research we found that this association shows neural specificity; specifically we found that groups of low and middle SES children differed disproportionately in perisylvian/language and prefrontal/executive abilities relative to other neurocognitive abilities. Here we address several new questions: To what extent does this disparity between groups reflect a gradient of SES-related individual differences in neurocognitive development, as opposed to a more categorical difference? What other neurocognitive systems differ across individuals as a function of SES? Does linguistic ability mediate SES differences in other systems? And how do specific prefrontal/executive subsystems vary with SES? One hundred and fifty healthy, socioeconomically diverse first-graders were administered tasks tapping language, visuospatial skills, memory, working memory, cognitive control, and reward processing. SES explained over 30% of the variance in language, and a smaller but highly significant portion of the variance in most other systems. Statistically mediating factors and possible interventional approaches are discussed.

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Socioeconomic Gradients Predict Individual Differences in Neurocognitive Abilities.

Using structural equation modeling the authors evaluated the contribution of morphological awareness, phonological memory, and phonological decoding to reading comprehension, reading vocabulary, spelling, and accuracy and rate of decoding morphologically complex words for 182 4th- and 5th-grade students, 218 6th- and 7th-grade students, and 207 8th- and 9th-grade students in a suburban school district. Morphological awareness made a significant unique contribution to reading comprehension, reading vocabulary, and spelling for all 3 groups, to all measures of decoding rate for the 8th/9th-grade students, and to some measures of decoding accuracy for the 4th/5th-grade and 8th/9th-grade students. Morphological awareness also made a significant contribution to reading comprehension above and beyond that of reading vocabulary for all 3 groups.

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Contributions of morphology beyond phonology to literacy outcomes of upper elementary and middle-school students.

https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(14)00749-1.pdf

Disruptive CHD8 Mutations Define a Subtype of Autism Early in Development

A model of the relations among cognitive precursors, early numeracy skill, and mathematical outcomes was tested for 182 children from 4.5 to 7.5 years of age. The model integrates research from neuroimaging, clinical populations, and normal development in children and adults. It includes 3 precursor pathways: quantitative, linguistic, and spatial attention. These pathways (a) contributed independently to early numeracy skills during preschool and kindergarten and (b) related differentially to performance on a variety of mathematical outcomes 2 years later. The success of the model in accounting for performance highlights the need to understand the fundamental underlying skills that contribute to diverse forms of mathematical competence.

/pdf/pathways-to-mathematics-longitudinal-predictors-of-4mxmw0ziao.pdf

Pathways to mathematics: longitudinal predictors of performance.

This study identified cognitive processes that underlie individual differences in working memory (WM) and mathematical problem-solution accuracy in elementary school children at risk and not at risk for serious math difficulties (SMD) A battery of tests was administered that assessed problem solving, achievement, and cognitive processing in children in first (N = 130), second (N = 92) and third grades (N = 131) The results were that (a) younger children and children at risk for SMD performed poorer on WM and problem-solving tasks, as well as measures of math calculation, reading, semantic processing, phonological processing, and inhibition, than older children and children not at risk for SMD and (b) WM predicted solution accuracy of word problems independent of measures of fluid intelligence, reading skill, math skill, knowledge of algorithms, phonological processing, semantic processing, speed, short-term memory, and inhibition The results support the notion that the executive system is an important predictor of children's problem solving

The Relationship Between Working Memory and Mathematical Problem Solving in Children at Risk and Not at Risk for Serious Math Difficulties

in learning to read are most frequently contributed to weaknesses in the ability to process the phonological features of language (Blachman, 1994; Blachman, Tangel, Ball, Black, & McGraw, 1999; Fletcher & Lyon, 1998; Mathes, Howard, Allen, & Fuchs, 1998; National Research Council, 1998; Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, 1994; Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, Alexander, & Conway, 1997). The term phonology is of Greek origin, phone meaning &dquo;voice&dquo; or &dquo;sound.&dquo; Phonological processing refers to the use of the sound system of language to process written and oral infonnation, including sensitivity to the sound segments in verbal language (Clark & Uhry, 1995; Harm & Seidenberg, 1999; Mathes &

Jami-Jon Mitchell

Papers

Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing

Binary Relations