Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Psychol Bull. 2015 Jul;141(4):723-46. doi: 10.1037/bul0000010. Epub 2015 Mar 30.
Economic disadvantage is a well-studied risk factor for poorer behavioral and academic functioning in young children. Although the mechanisms by which disadvantage impacts children have long been of interest to researchers, studies to date have predominantly focused on mechanisms that are external to the child (e.g., parental depression, marital conflict). Very few studies have examined the internal, cognitive aspects of the experience of economic disadvantage, and almost none have considered how the effects of disadvantage on children's functioning might be mediated through cognitive processes. This article provides a framework for research into cognitive and social-cognitive mediators of economic disadvantage operating in early-to-middle childhood. The initial section of the article briefly reviews and summarizes the extant literature on childhood poverty and its effects. The second section reviews the evidence that preschool-aged children have the requisite cognitive abilities to recognize social inequality in their environments, to be aware of stereotypes related to social class, and to connect these social concepts to their own experience. The third section reviews and evaluates the small literature on children's appraisals, attributions, stereotypes, and perceptions of or about poverty and inequality. The fourth section defines and evaluates the literature on 2 social-cognitive processes-stereotype threat and status anxiety-that are hypothesized to mediate the effects of economic disadvantage on children's functioning. The article concludes with a series of proposed questions and hypotheses for future research, and elaborates on the potential implications of the proposed area of research. (PsycINFO Database Record
经济劣势是研究充分的风险因素，会导致幼儿表现出较差的行为和学业功能。尽管劣势影响儿童的机制一直是研究人员感兴趣的话题，但迄今为止的研究主要集中在儿童外部的机制上（例如，父母抑郁、婚姻冲突）。很少有研究考察经济劣势的内部认知方面，几乎没有研究考虑劣势对儿童功能的影响如何通过认知过程来介导。本文为研究在儿童早期至中期发挥作用的经济劣势的认知和社会认知中介提供了一个框架。文章的初始部分简要回顾和总结了关于儿童贫困及其影响的现有文献。第二部分回顾了证据表明，学龄前儿童具有识别环境中社会不平等、意识到与社会阶层相关的刻板印象以及将这些社会概念与自己的经验联系起来的必要认知能力。第三部分回顾和评估了关于儿童对贫困和不平等的看法、归因、刻板印象以及对贫困和不平等的感知的少量文献。第四部分定义和评估了假设可以中介经济劣势对儿童功能影响的两个社会认知过程——刻板印象威胁和地位焦虑的文献。文章最后提出了一系列未来研究的问题和假设，并详细阐述了拟议研究领域的潜在影响。
