The Effect of Socioeconomic Disparities on Prefrontal Activation in Initiating Joint Attention: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Evidence From Two Socioeconomic Status Groups.

Keya Ding,Chuanjiang Li,Dongchuan Yu,Yanwei Li,Hongan Wang

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2021.741872

Abstract

Low socioeconomic status (SES) may generally have a long-lasting negative effect on cognitive development, and show deficits in the development of executive functions. However, it is unclear whether there is an SES-dependent disparity in the functional brain development of the prefrontal cortex. By collecting task-related functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) data and behavioral data (e.g., intelligence, language, home reading environment (HRE), family income, and parental education level), the current study aimed to detect whether the SES of preschool children (N = 86) is associated with prefrontal activation during the joint attention task. Results verified that low-SES children show lower right prefrontal activation during joint attention than Relatively High-SES children. In addition, our findings confirmed the mediating effect of HRE on the association between SES and brain activation during joint attention, as well as that between SES and language ability. These results suggest that SES contributes to functional development of the prefrontal regions, and the improvement of HRE could be a potential strategy to intervene SES-related disparities on child development.

Highlights

Socioeconomic status (SES) has long been recognized as an important determinant of cognitive and academic functioning throughout life
We verified that: (i) the socioeconomic status (SES) level may be predicted by the weighted sum of family income, mother’s education level, and father’s education level; and (ii) the home reading environment (HRE) variable may be predicted by the weighted sum of the number of storybooks in the home, days of reading per week, and the frequency of parent-child reading at home
The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT) score was correlated with SES level (r = 0.259, p = 0.023) and HRE level (r = 0.4, p < 0.001); while the Raven test score was correlated with SES level (r = 0.344, p = 0.003) and HRE level (r = 0.380, p = 0.001)

Summary

Introduction

Socioeconomic status (SES) has long been recognized as an important determinant of cognitive and academic functioning throughout life. By using brain imaging tools such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and electroencephalography (EEG), some scientists have just investigated the effect of SES-dependent disparity on brain development recently. Socioeconomic Disparities on Brain Activation (Moriguchi and Shinohara, 2019). Available evidence (Moriguchi and Shinohara, 2019; Judd et al, 2020; Ramphal et al, 2020; Tooley et al, 2021) support that low-SES may contribute to unexpected abnormal changes in brain structure, functions, connectivity, and activation pattern, in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The current study aimed to analyze task-related brain imaging data and bring new insights into the understanding of brain structural and functional changes underlying childhood SES disparities

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion