In an article in the Psychologist magazine, Michael Thomas discusses new research on the impact of differences in socio-economic status (SES) on children’s cognitive and brain development, and how these are associated with differences in education-relevant skills that are already present when children start school. The article was based on a talk presented at a Learnus Mediated Workshop. The video of the presentation can be found here.

What are the policy implications of this research? The article highlights three:

1. Just because the effects of low SES are measurable in the brain does not imply they cannot be reversed. Outside of cases of severe neglect, many cognitive differences shown by children from very low SES families respond well to training techniques, such as those that focus on executive functions and engage with parents.
2. A mechanistic perspective highlights multiple points of possible intervention (directly on SES, indirectly on experiences or biological processes that mediate SES effects, indirectly on brain development by training specific neurocognitive functions, and directly on outcomes educationally or therapeutically); and they allow fostering of factors of resilience such as the mother–child or caregiver–child relationship
3. Measures of brain function make the greatest contribution where they can show that two individuals with similar behaviour actually exhibit the behaviour for different reasons. This might imply that, for example, childhood emotional regulation difficulties caused by adverse childhood events are best addressed by therapies that address the traumatic experiences, while those with similar difficulties caused by lack of cognitive stimulation are best addressed by learning opportunities scaffolded to encourage self-regulation.

The full article can be downloaded here.