Socioeconomic Disparities in Academic Achievement: A Multi-Modal Investigation of Neural Mechanisms in Children and Adolescents

Growing evidence suggests that childhood socioeconomic status (SES) influences neural development, which may contribute to the well-documented SES-related disparities in academic achievement. However, the particular aspects of SES that impact neural structure and function are not well understood. Here, we investigate associations of childhood SES and a potential mechanism—degree of cognitive stimulation in the home environment—with cortical structure, white matter microstructure, and neural function during a working memory (WM) task across development. Analyses included 53 youths (age 6–19 years). Higher SES as reflected in the income-to-needs ratio was associated with higher parent-reported achievement, WM performance, and cognitive stimulation in the home environment. Although SES was not significantly associated with cortical thickness, children raised in more cognitively stimulating environments had thicker cortex in the frontoparietal network and cognitive stimulation mediated the assocation between SES and cortical thickness in the frontoparietal network. Higher family SES was associated with white matter microstructure and neural activation in the frontoparietal network during a WM task, including greater fractional anisotropy (FA) in the right and left superior longitudinal fasciculi (SLF), and greater BOLD activation in multiple regions of the prefrontal cortex during WM encoding and maintenance. Greater FA and activation in these regions was associated higher parent-reported achievement. Together, cognitive stimulation, WM performance, FA in the SLF, and prefrontal activation during WM encoding and maintenance significantly mediated the association between SES and parent-reported achievement. These findings highlight potential neural, cognitive, and environmental mechanisms linking SES with academic achievement and suggest that enhancing cognitive stimulation in the home environment might be one effective strategy for reducing SES-related disparities in academic outcomes

Catastrophizing, rumination, and reappraisal prospectively predict adolescent PTSD symptom onset following a terrorist attack: Jenness et al.

Disruptions in emotion regulation are a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology. However, scant research has examined whether emotion regulation strategies are related to the onset of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms among youths exposed to trauma. We investigated whether pretrauma emotion regulation strategies prospectively predicted PTSD symptom onset after the 2013 Boston Marathon terrorist attack among adolescents and whether these associations were moderated by the degree of exposure to media coverage of the attack

The Role of Visual Association Cortex in Associative Memory Formation across Development

Associative learning underlies the formation of new episodic memories. Associative memory improves across development, and this age-related improvement is supported by the development of the hippocampus and pFC. Recent work, however, additionally suggests a role for visual association cortex in the formation of associative memories. This study investigated the role of category-preferential visual processing regions in associative memory across development using a paired associate learning task in a sample of 56 youths (age 6–19 years). Participants were asked to bind an emotional face with an object while undergoing fMRI scanning. Outside the scanner, participants completed a memory test. We first investigated age-related changes in neural recruitment and found linear age-related increases in activation in lateral occipital cortex and fusiform gyrus, which are involved in visual processing of objects and faces, respectively. Furthermore, greater activation in these visual processing regions was associated with better subsequent memory for pairs over and above the effect of age and of hippocampal and pFC activation on performance. Recruitment of these visual processing regions mediated the association between age and memory performance, over and above the effects of hippocampal activation. Taken together, these findings extend the existing literature to suggest that greater recruitment of category-preferential visual processing regions during encoding of associative memories is a neural mechanism explaining improved memory across development

Hippocampal Contribution to Context Encoding across Development Is Disrupted following Early-Life Adversity

Context can drastically influence responses to environmental stimuli. For example, a gunshot should provoke a different response at a public park than a shooting range. Little is known about how contextual processing and neural correlates change across human development or about individual differences related to early environmental experiences. Children (N = 60; 8–19 years, 24 exposed to interpersonal violence) completed a context encoding task during fMRI scanning using a delayed match-to-sample design with neutral, happy, and angry facial cues embedded in realistic background scenes. Outside the scanner, participants completed a memory test for context-face pairings. Context memory and neural correlates of context encoding did not vary with age. Larger hippocampal volume was associated with better context memory. Posterior hippocampus was recruited during context encoding, and greater activation in this region predicted better memory for contexts paired with angry faces. Children exposed to violence had poor memory of contexts paired with angry faces, reduced hippocampal volume, and atypical neural recruitment on encoding trials with angry faces, including reduced hippocampal activation and greater functional connectivity between hippocampus and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC). Greater hippocampus-vlPFC connectivity was associated with worse memory for contexts paired with angry faces. Posterior hippocampus appears to support context encoding, a process that does not exhibit age-related variation from middle childhood to late adolescence. Exposure to dangerous environments in childhood is associated with poor context encoding in the presence of threat, likely due to greater vlPFC-dependent attentional narrowing on threat cues at the expense of hippocampus-dependent processing of the broader context

Violence Exposure and Neural Systems Underlying Working Memory for Emotional Stimuli in Youth

Violence exposure during childhood is common and associated with poor cognitive and academic functioning. However, little is known about how violence exposure influences cognitive processes that might contribute to these disparities, such as working memory, or their neural underpinnings, particularly for cognitive processes that occur in emotionally salient contexts. We address this gap in a sample of 54 participants aged 8 to 19 years (50% female), half with exposure to interpersonal violence. Participants completed a delayed match to sample task for emotional faces while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. Violence-exposed youth performed worse than controls on happy and neutral, but not angry, trials. In whole-brain analysis, violence-exposed youth had reduced activation in the left middle frontal gyrus and right intraparietal sulcus during encoding and the left superior temporal sulcus and temporal-parietal junction during retrieval compared to control youth. Reduced activation in the left middle frontal gyrus during encoding and the left superior temporal sulcus during retrieval mediated the association between violence exposure and task performance. Violence exposure influences the frontoparietal network that supports working memory as well as regions involved in facial processing during working memory for emotional stimuli. Reduced neural recruitment in these regions may explain atypical patterns of cognitive processing seen among violence-exposed youth, particularly within emotional contexts

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on the Classification of Children With Disabilities: Part II. Implementing Classification Systems in Schools

This article is the second in a 2-part synthesis of an international comparative seminar on the classification of children with disabilities. In this article, the authors discuss classification frameworks used in identifying children for the purpose of providing special education and related services. The authors summarize 7 papers that addressed aspects of disability classification in educational systems in the United States and the United Kingdom. They discuss current policies for determining which children receive special education services, the origins and evolution of these policies, and current dilemmas and challenges associated with classification schemes and the provision of special education. The authors also describe emerging data and possible models and practices that might be used in educational systems. They conclude with the recognition that both formal and informal educational classification systems will continue to be required within a system that must address the competing priorities of individual needs and the broader social and community goals of education. However, as was argued in the previous article, by understanding the mix of intentions that underpin these policies, as well as periodically reviewing the norms that underlie them, it may be possible to move classification to descriptors that can be used to efficiently and effectively define educational needs and distribute resources

Childhood abuse and reduced cortical thickness in brain regions involved in emotional processing

Alterations in gray matter development represent a potential pathway through which childhood abuse is associated with psychopathology. Several prior studies find reduced volume and thickness of prefrontal (PFC) and temporal cortex regions in abused compared to non-abused adolescents, although most prior research is based on adults and volume-based measures. The current study tests the hypothesis that child abuse, independent of parental education, predicts reduced cortical thickness in prefrontal and temporal cortices as well as reduced gray mater volume (GMV) in subcortical regions during adolescence

Maltreatment Exposure, Brain Structure and Fear Conditioning in Children and Adolescents

Alterations in learning processes and the neural circuitry that supports fear conditioning and extinction represent mechanisms through which trauma exposure might influence risk for psychopathology. Few studies examine how trauma or neural structure relates to fear conditioning in children. Children (n=94) aged 6–18 years, 40.4% (n=38) with exposure to maltreatment (physical abuse, sexual abuse, or domestic violence), completed a fear conditioning paradigm utilizing blue and yellow bells as conditioned stimuli (CS+/CS−) and an aversive alarm noise as the unconditioned stimulus. Skin conductance responses (SCR) and self-reported fear were acquired. Magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired from 60 children. Children without maltreatment exposure exhibited strong differential conditioning to the CS+ vs CS−, based on SCR and self-reported fear. In contrast, maltreated children exhibited blunted SCR to the CS+ and failed to exhibit differential SCR to the CS+ vs CS− during early conditioning. Amygdala and hippocampal volume were reduced among children with maltreatment exposure and were negatively associated with SCR to the CS+ during early conditioning in the total sample, although these associations were negative only among non-maltreated children and were positive among maltreated children. The association of maltreatment with externalizing psychopathology was mediated by this perturbed pattern of fear conditioning. Child maltreatment is associated with failure to discriminate between threat and safety cues during fear conditioning in children. Poor threat–safety discrimination might reflect either enhanced fear generalization or a deficit in associative learning, which may in turn represent a central mechanism underlying the development of maltreatment-related externalizing psychopathology in children

Designing for Dissemination: Lessons in Message Design from 1-2-3 Pap

Despite a large number of evidence-based health communication interventions tested in private, public, and community health settings, there is a dearth of research on successful secondary dissemination of these interventions to other audiences. This article presents the case study of 1-2-3 Pap, a health communication intervention to improve human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination uptake and Pap testing outcomes in Eastern Kentucky, and explores strategies used to disseminate this intervention to other populations in Kentucky, North Carolina, and West Virginia. Through this dissemination project, we identified several health communication intervention design considerations that facilitated our successful dissemination to these other audiences; these intervention design considerations include (a) developing strategies for reaching other potential audiences, (b) identifying intervention message adaptations that might be needed, and (c) determining the most appropriate means or channels by which to reach these potential future audiences. Using 1-2-3 Pap as an illustrative case study, we describe how careful planning and partnership development early in the intervention development process can improve the potential success of enhancing the reach and effectiveness of an intervention to other audiences beyond the audience for whom the intervention messages were originally designed