Pathways from Socioeconomic Status to Early Academic Achievement: The Role of Specific Executive Functions

Abstract

Among the many factors contributing to the SES-achievement gap, executive function (EF) skills have received a considerable amount of attention, given their role in supporting academic skill development. While recent work has demonstrated that global EF constructs mediate SES-achievement relations, less attention has been paid to unpacking the role of specific EF components in linking SES to achievement. Data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 1,273) were analyzed to assess direct and indirect associations between SES indicators, preschool EF skills, and first-grade math and reading achievement. Using path analysis, we found parent education and working memory to be uniquely and most predictive of both achievement domains. Further, after controlling for baseline academic skills, verbal ability, and other child- and family-level covariates, only working memory mediated the association between parent education and children’s math achievement. These findings offer a comprehensive look at the specific mechanisms through which socioeconomic disadvantage contributes to children’s academic development and provide an initial step towards generating more precise targets for policies and interventions aimed at closing the achievement gap.

Executive function mediates the association between cumulative risk and learning in Ghanaian schoolchildren.

“…For example, Kim et al (2020) found that EF explained the negative association for only two of the seven individual risk factors-age-for-grade and perceived community safety-on children's literacy and numeracy skills. Further, similar to the direct effects between EF and math, studies drawing on samples of children from high-income countries have found a stronger mediating relation between risk, EF, and math than for literacy or language abilities (Lawson & Farah, 2017;Nesbitt et al, 2013;Waters et al, 2020). In line with this evidence, we found that EF explained a larger proportion of the relation between cumulative risk and math than for literacy (100.0% vs. 65.3%, respectively) in our sample.…”

“…A small body of research from the United States has shown that EF partially explains the negative associations between adversity and children’s academic outcomes in early and middle childhood (Lawson & Farah, 2017; Waters et al, 2020). Extending this line of work generally—and to SSA and other LMICs in particular—is a fruitful area of investigation.…”

Home learning environment and physical development impact children’s executive function development and literacy in rural Côte d’Ivoire

“…Given that EF is associated with both SES and academic achievement, EF has been proposed to mediate SES and academic achievement, including literacy. Indeed, several studies have implicated EF in SES-related gaps in academic achievement, including both school readiness (Dilworth-Bart, 2012;Fitzpatrick et al, 2014;Micalizzi et al, 2019) and school achievement across childhood and adolescence (Lawson & Farah, 2017;Nesbitt et al, 2013;Sektnan et al, 2010;Waters et al, 2021) the primary school net enrollment rate is 91.1%, only 73.26% of children will complete primary school (UNESCO, 2016; UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2014). The age at which a child begins their schooling is highly variable.…”

Language development as a mechanism linking socioeconomic status to executive functioning development in preschool

“…Two of the cognitive domains most strongly associated with SES are language skills (for review, see Pace et al., 2017) and executive functioning (EF) skills (for review, see Lawson et al., 2018). Both sets of skills are critical for academic learning, and differences in language and EF each contribute to SES‐related disparities in academic achievement (e.g., Burchinal et al., 2002; Durham et al., 2007; Fitzpatrick et al., 2014; Lawson & Farah, 2017; Rosen et al., 2018; Waters et al., 2021).…”