Investigators studied whether working memory of children living in rural poverty is distinct from the working memory profiles of children in urban poverty.
The results clearly suggest that school-aged low-socioeconomic status children exhibit both verbal and visuospatial working memory deficits, possibly due to increased levels of stress. Children in urban poverty showed symmetric working memory weaknesses, while children in rural poverty had worse visuospatial working memory than verbal working memory.
For this study, sixth grade students were selected to participate, broken into four categories: low-income rural, low-income urban, high-income rural, and high-income urban. Children were categorized as low income if their family income was below the national median family income of $50,033, attend a school in which at least 75% of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and the student themselves qualified for free lunches. Participants were categorized as urban if the school they attended served an "urbanized area" as defined by the US Census Bureau: was located in a county with a population of more than 200,000 and had an average enrollment per grade level at the secondary level of more than 300 students.
The results clearly suggest that school-aged low-SES (socioeconomic status) children exhibit both verbal and visuospatial working memory deficits, possibly due to increased levels of stress. Children in urban poverty showed symmetric working memory weaknesses, while children in rural poverty had worse visuospatial working memory than verbal working memory. The low-SES urban children had poorer verbal working memory than the low-SES rural children, possibly due to increased exposure to noise pollution, suggests Tine. The results also revealed that high-SES rural and urban children show near-identical verbal and visuospatial working memory. "These results suggest that living in a rural vs. urban area is associated with working memory for low-SES, but not high-SES children" says Tine. Tine explains that this novel finding aligns with previous work showing that among low-SES children environmental factors account for the majority of variance in cognitive ability, while genes account for little variance. In high-income children the opposite is true. For high-income children, genes account for the majority of variance.
Opportunities for further research on the topic are prevalent. Working memory differences could be, in part, due to language differences that exist between the two samples. Additionally, the majority of low-income rural samples identified as Caucasian, while the majority of the low-income urban sample identified as a racial minority. Working memory differences may be attributed to different racial identities or stereotype threat. Moving forward, Tine points out, "we need to think about ways that low-income rural and urban children can overcome their specific working memory difficulties so they can optimize their learning on these academic tasks."
GMT 12:33 2018 Sunday ,21 January
Hot air? Study finds bikram no healthier than other yogaGMT 06:23 2018 Saturday ,13 January
'How much do you earn?' Germany takes on gender pay gapGMT 10:36 2017 Tuesday ,24 October
So how do mega-storms get named, anyhow?GMT 10:33 2017 Tuesday ,24 October
What is storm surge and why is it so dangerous?GMT 11:17 2017 Tuesday ,14 March
Will March snow cherry blossoms?GMT 12:05 2017 Tuesday ,07 March
Is Arctic sea ice doomed to disappear?GMT 12:32 2017 Monday ,20 February
Why online retail growth in the UAE is different than in the rest of the worldGMT 08:16 2017 Wednesday ,01 February
One income for all: far-fetched, or future fact with technology-driven changes?Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©
Maintained and developed by Arabs Today Group SAL.
All rights reserved to Arab Today Media Group 2021 ©
Send your comments
Your comment as a visitor