Lawson Gwendolyn M, Farah Martha J
University of Pennsylvania, 3720 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States.
Int J Behav Dev. 2017 Jan;41(1):94-104. doi: 10.1177/0165025415603489. Epub 2015 Sep 22.
Childhood socioeconomic status (SES), as measured by parental education and family income, is highly predictive of academic achievement, but little is known about how specific cognitive systems shape SES disparities in achievement outcomes. This study investigated the extent to which executive function (EF) mediated associations between parental education and family income and changes in reading and math achievement in a sample of 336 children between the ages of 6 and 15 years from the NIH MRI Study of Normal Brain Development. Verbal memory was simultaneously modeled as a comparison candidate mediator. SES predicted significant changes in reading and math achievement over a two-year time period. Furthermore, executive function, but not verbal memory, was found to partially mediate the relationship between SES variables and change in math achievement. Collectively, these results suggest that executive function may be an important link between childhood SES and academic achievement.
童年社会经济地位（SES），以父母教育程度和家庭收入衡量，对学业成绩具有高度预测性，但对于特定认知系统如何塑造成就结果中的SES差异却知之甚少。本研究调查了执行功能（EF）在来自美国国立卫生研究院正常脑发育MRI研究的336名6至15岁儿童样本中，在父母教育程度和家庭收入与阅读和数学成绩变化之间的关联中所起的中介作用程度。同时将言语记忆作为比较候选中介进行建模。SES预测了两年时间内阅读和数学成绩的显著变化。此外，发现执行功能而非言语记忆部分介导了SES变量与数学成绩变化之间的关系。总体而言，这些结果表明执行功能可能是童年SES与学业成绩之间的重要联系。
