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Childhood socioeconomic status and executive function in childhood and beyond

  • Briana S. Last
  • , Gwen M. Lawson
  • , Kaitlyn Breiner
  • , Laurence Steinberg
  • , Martha J. Farah
  • University of Pennsylvania
  • University of California at Los Angeles
  • California State University Dominguez Hills
  • Temple University

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

128 Scopus citations

Abstract

Socioeconomic status (SES) predicts health, wellbeing, and cognitive ability, including executive function (EF). A body of recent work has shown that childhood SES is positively related to EF, but it is not known whether this disparity grows, diminishes or holds steady over development, from childhood through adulthood. We examined the association between childhood SES and EF in a sample ranging from 9–25 years of age, with six canonical EF tasks. Analyzing all of the tasks together and in functionally defined groups, we found positive relations between SES and EF, and the relations did not vary by age. Analyzing the tasks separately, SES was positively associated with performance in some but not all EF measures, depending on the covariates used, again without varying by age. These results add to a growing body of evidence that childhood SES is associated with EF abilities, and contribute novel evidence concerning the persistence of this association into early adulthood.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0202964
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume13
Issue number8
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2018

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