Severe poverty and growth in behavioral self-regulation: The mediating role of parenting

Abstract

This study examined how exposure to severe poverty related to behavioral self-regulation growth during early childhood as mediated by parenting practices. Ethnic differences were tested. Data were collected across 4 waves from 359 low-income African American and Latino families. The frequency of exposure to severe poverty was indicated by how many times family income fell below 50% of the federal poverty line across 4 waves. Behavioral self-regulation was assessed when children were 3½, 6, and 7 years old (Wave 2-4), and parenting was observed when children were age 2½ years old (Wave 1). More frequent exposure to severe poverty was associated with slower behavioral self-regulation growth, and the effect was partially mediated through less *

Cascades From Early Adolescent Impulsivity to Late Adolescent Antisocial Personality Disorder and Alcohol Use Disorder

“…In the present study, SES effects were accounted for and we found that SES was a significant predictor of impulsivity at each wave. Future research could further investigate the mechanisms by which early exposure to socioeconomic disadvantage influences heightened impulsivity during adolescence, including impacts on child executive functioning and parenting behaviors [47,48]. As for prevention and intervention programs, individuallevel interventions such as mindfulness training have shown promising effects for reducing both impulsivity [49] and antisocial behavior [50] in youth.…”

Family Socioeconomic Status and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Preschool Children: The Mediating Role of Executive Function

“…Although this may reflect that regulation ability is not a mediating variable between SES and ADHD in young children, it may also be due to the fact that the families selected for this study were from urban areas and were mostly intermediate and higher in SES distribution. Yu et al found that family poverty hindered the development of the children’s regulation ability [ 16 ]. This needs to be supplemented with data on low SES to further validate the explanation.…”

“…In this model, parents from lower SES families invest fewer resources in providing their children with cognitively stimulating learning materials and experiences (e.g., books or museum visits), hindering the development of EF. Studies have also found that children with lower SES show poorer performance on EF tasks [ 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ]. Therefore, the following hypothesis is suggested:…”

Exploring Idiographic Approaches to Children's Executive Function Performance: An Intensive Longitudinal Study

“…Doing so, however, creates an ecological fallacy (Molenaar, 2004 ) that results in inaccurate scientific findings as well as ineffective policies and interventions (Rose, 2016 ; Rose et al, 2013 ). For example, longitudinal studies might measure EFs among a group of preschoolers and then again a year later, and the group average might show a statistically significant upward developmental trend in EFs from early to middle childhood (Garon et al, 2008 ; Carlson, 2005 ; Diamond, 2006 ; Frye et al, 1995 ; Montroy et al, 2016 ; Yu et al, 2020 ). However, these trends do not enable practitioners to say with much certainty that a specific 5-year-old must have a higher level of EFs than any other 4-year-old child due to their specific individual ⇔ context relations.…”

“…For example, specific children may exhibit accelerated EF development during preschool but show a slow improvement into middle childhood. Other children may instead show a low starting point in EFs during preschool but demonstrate faster growth later on (Pacheco et al, 2018 ; Yu et al, 2020 ).…”