Impact of Poverty in Early Childhood Cognitive and Learning Development
- Pages:
- 7
- Academic Level:
- University
- Paper Type:
- Argumentative Essay
- Discipline:
- Psychology
Length/Format: Excluding the cover page and references, the essay will be no longer than 7 double-
spaced pages,. The essay will be written in 12-point Times New Roman, and will have 2.5cm
margins all around.
Reference requirement: A minimum of 5 science-based references in addition to websites and
textbook.
Essay sections:
1. Introduction: in-depth description of the TED talk you selected (https://www.ted.com/talks/
by consulting other documents (e.g., books) on the topic that go beyond the talk and your
textbook.
2. Critical Analysis: In-depth comparison of the similarities and differences between the ideas
presented and what you have learned and researched about child development. To do so, it is
best to break down the talk as a series of ideas or components. Analyze each idea/component
by assessing:
a. its theoretical standpoint(s) or its view of children;
b. what aspects of development are examined and why (e.g., cognition, learning, emotion,
environment, family);
c. evidence in support of thpspe view(s) presented;
d. and make insightful criticisms (positive and/or negative) about each component.
3. Conclusion:
a. Concluding statements about the ideas analyzed.
b. What questions, theoretical or applied, need to be addressed next? Be specific.
c. Include concluding remarks that will provide closure to the paper.
In addition, the essay must include the following elements:
1. A cover page with the title of your essay, course number and section, your name, and id
number.
2. A reference list of all sources cited in your paper.
Impact of Poverty in Early Childhood Cognitive and Learning Development
Student's Name
Course Title
Professor's Name
Date
Impact of Poverty in Early Childhood Cognitive and Learning Development
Introduction
Experience changes the brain structure in early childhood, even before children start attending school. The first few years after birth are significant for brain development. After starting kindergarten, some children hit a milestone in cognitive development while others struggle to catch up. A child’s environment is critical in early school readiness development of early literacy and math skills. Differences in children's cognitive development tend to persist across life stages if the environmental variables do not change. The gap continues to widen as kids get older, which may eventually lead to differences in academic achievement, college attendance rate, graduation rate, employment, career projection, and life achievement. Reducing socioeconomic inequalities can reduce the gap between children's cognitive development. This research will involve an in-depth comparison of significant similarities and the differences from different research findings and conclusions about child cognitive development. It concludes that positive experiences in early childhood are associated with increased neural plasticity and better outcomes in child mental and learning development, which is evident through the increased surface area of the brain cerebral cortex.
Summary of the research
The research examined cognitively and learning development among children below three years. A larger surface area implies more brain development (Noble, 2019). It evaluated families with an annual income of between $20,000 and $200,000. The investigators focus on the cerebral cortex development to derive conclusions about cognitive abilities in early childhood. The cerebral cortex is associated with essential mental capabilities in child development and learning. It contains a network of approximately 14-16 billion neurons. The study found that children from households with higher incomes have a development advantage and face fewer challenges, including access to healthcare, a better environment, and nutrition. Children from families with higher incomes have a larger cortex surface area, which implies higher cognition. Poverty is one of the modifiable factors that can bridge the gap of brain development at the early stages of life.
Regions that support a set of skills, including language skills vocabulary, avoid distraction and exert self-control. Children are living in poverty struggle with fundamental skills. A child born in a poor household performs worse in language skills development, impulse or stress control, and vocabulary tests. The curve demonstrating the relationship between family income and the corresponding brain structure is steepest when the income level for a family is lowest in the distribution (Troller-Renfree, Costanzo, Duncan, & Noble, 2019). However, there are relatively small differences when families with high incomes receive more income. A rise in family income can significantly differ among children from disadvantaged families. For example, an extra $20,000 to high-income families does not make a big difference compared to the same amount added to a low-income family's income.
There are significant differences in people across stages of life resulting from related early childhood brain development. Research indicates no differences in how a child's brain works at birth. However, by the time they go to primary school, a child living in poverty will have a cognitive score that is 60% lower than a child from a high-income family. A child from a low-income family has a probability of dropping out of a high school of 5:1. If the child manages to complete school, it becomes even more challenging for them to obtain an undergraduate degree or higher. When both are approximately 35 years old, the child from a low-income household has a higher probability of suffering in poverty.
Critical analysis
Poverty is a risk factor for brain structure and child cognitive development. According to Public Health Scotland (2021), children in deprived areas fail to excel in writing, numeracy, and reading which are fundamental parts of the early curriculum. The relationship between household income and brain structure is independent of age, sex, race or ethnicity. Research shows that approximately 51% of children attending public schools across the U.S are from low-income households (Jensen, 2017). According to a study, reducing physiological stress fosters neurodevelopment in the first year after a child's birth (Troller-Renfree et al., 2020). Infants in households that have high levels of physiological stress have poor development of brain parts and fundamental functions. Specific brain areas are sensitive to stress for animals and humans. The stress may result from socioeconomic differences and challenging experiences in life.
The study indicates a tremendous variability in cognitive development among some children. First, there are many children from low-income households with large brain surfaces. Second, there are multiple kids from high-income households with smaller brain surfaces. While growing up in a low-income family is a risk factor for small brain structure, other factors can change brain structure development in a significant way. For instance, a study found that factors including parental education level, parental intelligence quotient (PIQ), and complexities in language input in children forecast cortical thickness (Demir-Lira, Asaridou, Nolte, Small, & Goldin-Meadow, 2021).
According to research, adversity in early childhood impacts brain network formation and the underlying visual and working memory (Wijeakumar, Kumar, Reyes, Tiwari, & Spencer, 2019). Children from low-income families have weaker brain activity. A child’s canonical memory and left frontal cortex become vulnerable, suppressing distractors. The neural regions such as the prefrontal cortex for cognitive tasks such as learning, social-emotional adjustment, and memorizing ideas are slower. The subtle difference in brain development at childhood have long-lasting impacts on their future. Poverty also impacts the hippocampus, frontal, and temporal cortex. Children from wealthier families have more vital abilities to detect cognitive task changes and suppress activation.
Bridging the gap in child cognitive development through changing the underlying circumstances
Brain structure does not determine a child's future success. Neuroscience has shown that life experiences can change brain structure, so any differences in children's brains are not necessarily permanent. Children have the opportunity to achieve great things no matter what their starting point may be. With hard work and dedication, they can exceed anyone—governments and private institutions fund education systems with many economic resources in child’s learning. Education is improved through various strategies. Intervening at the level of learning is a complex undertaking. Implementing learning policies such as evidence-based education initiatives is a challenging task. The initiative aims to help children from low-income backgrounds with cognitive issues they are more likely to struggle with, including literacy, and self-regulation, to increase test scores and cognitive development. Research shows that this approach is challenging, expensive, labor-intensive. The strategy may also not work because, in most cases, disparities emerge while children are still toddlers before starting formal education. Therefore, while school-level initiatives are significant, they may not make a remarkable difference.
Alternatively, we can change children's experiences from birth to the start of school. Better experiences in early childhood can improve brain development. Undesired experiences when a child grows up in a low-income environment lead to early exposure to drugs, injustices and discrimination, stressful events, limited healthcare access, and poor nutrition. The research can drive change policies to improve children's experiences after birth and improve development.
According to research, early childhood language development varies among children and has significant implications for life outcomes (Demir-Lira, Asaridou, Nolte, Small, & Goldin-Meadow, 2021). Variability in language skills is related to brain structure development, mainly cortical thickness. A study shows that if the home language environment improves by increasing the number of conversations, words, and engagement with children at a young age, they develop a larger surface area of the cortex (Noble, 2019). Engaging a child with multiple conversations every day can improve their cognitive development. There is a significant difference in conversations for kids from well-off backgrounds and less disadvantaged families. Kids who experience more back and forth responsive conversations have better development and larger brain surface on the cortex, responsible for language, reading, and vocabulary skills. A study found a correlation between socioeconomic disparities and language development, such as reading skills (Merz, Maskus, He, Melvin, & Noble, 2020). The study shows that children's perisylvian cortical surface area increases with experiencing more adult-child responsive conversations. Scientists are testing this hypothesis by evaluating more engaging discussions between parents and children. Therefore, language experience and home linguistic input can partially illustrate disparities in reading skills in early child development.
Transforming the economic circumstances at early childhood
A developing child’s brain is significantly malleable before the age of three. A team of neural scientists, professional economists, and social scientists investigated whether minimizing childhood poverty can have a positive result in a child’s brain, emotions, and cognitive development. The project entails a randomized test starting in May 2018. They recruited 1000 mothers living below the poverty line. They would receive monthly cash gifts in the first 40 months after birth. The gift raised the household income by 20-25% every month; this was a marker of difference in their lives.
The study asserted that we could significantly improve early childhood development by minimizing struggles. The research generates insights and debates concerning better social services that can change the development of millions of children. While poverty may only be a single variable in a multi-variate equation, policy changes can address it. The government and private sector can formulate policies to end early childhood poverty through various methods. These include adjusting the minimum wage for casual jobs taken by low-income households, tax credit approaches, and transition jobs for young mothers.
Child poverty has multi-factorial causes in the United States and across the world. Government and non-governmental organizations are trying to end child poverty in low-income families. Change policies can focus on causes of poverty, including poor nutrition and lack of access to high-quality healthcare (UNICEF, 2022).
The government can also create programs that offer assistance to low-income households to ensure that financial; constraints are not barriers to child development. These policies can advocate for early childhood development and minimize the gap in cognition caused by economic disparity. However, supporting specific actions requires critical analysis and further research to provide scientific decision-making evidence.
Conclusion
The research explored the impacts of poverty reduction on early childhood cognitive and learning development. The study shows that the poverty children face in early childhood is a significant risk factor for poor child development. They experience challenges that can result in poor growth of cortex surface area. Economic disadvantage impacts cognitive development and electrical brain activity by negatively affecting academic achievement, adult earnings, career projection, and health status and well-being. In contrast, higher-income is associated with high social-emotional processing, language, memory, and self-regulation scores. Poverty is a major driving force for the differences in cognitive and learning development among children below three. A randomized control study shows that children from low-income and struggling families have a smaller cortex surface area, indicating low cognitive and learning developments—the poorer the household, the highest the challenges in child development. However, the study suggests that altering poverty-related factors in early childhood can enhance a child's neural plasticity.
Since there are still children from low-income families with excellent cognitive and learning development, future research can investigate the differences in mental response among individuals and other brain-related factors causing the differences in child development. In addition, some families may be economically stable but still result in poor child cognitive development due to several issues such as divorce or limitation in parent-child interactive encounters. Therefore, there is a need to also factor in family stability and investigate its impact on child development, particularly among economically stable households.
References
Demir-Lira, Ö. E., Asaridou, S. S., Nolte, C., Small, S. L., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2021). Parent Language Input Prior to School Forecasts Change in Children's Language-Related Cortical Structures During Mid-Adolescence. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 15(1), 1-12.
Jensen, E. (2017, 10 24). How to Improve Brain Function and Reverse Poverty's Impact on Student Learning. Retrieved from EdSurge: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-10-24-how-to-improve-brain-function-and-reverse-poverty-s-impact-on-student-learning
Merz, E. C., Maskus, E. A., He, X., Melvin, S. A., & Noble, K. G. (2020). Socioeconomic Disparities in Language Input Are Associated With Children's Language-Related Brain Structure and Reading Skills. Child Development, 91(3), 846–860.
Noble, K. (Director). (2019). How does income affect childhood brain development? [Motion Picture]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberly_noble_how_does_income_affect_childhood_brain_development
Public Health Scotland. (2021, 24 12). Child poverty overview: Impact of child poverty. Retrieved from Public health Scotland: http://www.healthscotland.scot/population-groups/children/child-poverty/child-poverty-overview/impact-of-child-poverty#:~:text=Poverty%20has%20negative%20impacts%20on,disease%20and%20mental%20health%20problems.
Troller-Renfree, S. V., Brito, N. H., Desai, P. M., Leon-Santos, A. G., Wiltshire, C. A., Motton, S. N., . . . Noble, K. G. (2020). Infants of mothers with higher physiological stress show alterations in brain function. Development Science, 23(6), e12976.
Troller-Renfree, S. V., Costanzo, M. A., Duncan, G. J., & Noble, K. G. (2019). The impact of a poverty reduction intervention on infant brain activity. PNAS, 119(5), e2115649119.
UNICEF. (2022). Milestone 4 Reducing child poverty through policy and programme change. Retrieved from UNICEF: https://www.unicef.org/media/65196/file/Child-Poverty-SDG-Guide-Milestone-4-March2017.pdf
Wijeakumar, S., Kumar, A., Reyes, L. M., Tiwari, M., & Spencer, J. P. (2019). Early adversity in rural India impacts the brain networks underlying visual working memory. Developmental Science, 22(5), e12822.