Genetic and shared environmental contributions to the relationship between the HOME environment and child and adolescent achievement

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.

Constructing and Adapting Causal and Formative Measures of Family Settings: The HOME Inventory as Illustration

Measures of the home environment are frequently used in studies of children's development. This review provides information on indices composed of causal and formative indicators (the kind of indicators often used to capture salient aspects of family environments) and to suggest approaches that may be useful in constructing such measures for diverse populations. The HOME Inventory is used to illustrate challenges scholars face in determining what to include in useful measures of family settings. To that end, a cross-cultural review of research on relations among HOME, family context, and child outcomes is presented. The end of the review offers a plan for how best to further research on relations between the home environment and child development for diverse populations.

Neurobehavioral consequences of prenatal antiepileptic drug exposure

Despite elevated rates of birth defects associated with prenatal antiepileptic drug exposure, pharmacotherapy is typically continued throughout pregnancy because of the risks posed to mother and child by recurrent seizures. Emerging data suggest that prenatal exposure to valproate or polytherapy may also be associated with increased risk of cognitive impairment. However, our understanding of the longer-term sequelae of prenatal antiepileptic drug exposure remains incomplete. Improved understanding of the neurobehavioral consequences of prenatal antiepileptic drug exposure is essential to ensure accurate information is available for women with epilepsy planning a pregnancy, and to achieve optimal outcomes for mothers and children.

Chaotic homes and school achievement: a twin study

BACKGROUND

Chaotic homes predict poor school performance. Given that it is known that genes affect both children's experience of household chaos and their school achievement, to what extent is the relationship between high levels of noise and environmental confusion in the home, and children's school performance, mediated by heritable child effects? This is the first study to explore the genetic and environmental pathways between household chaos and academic performance.

METHOD

Children's perceptions of family chaos at ages 9 and 12 and their school performance at age 12 were assessed in more than 2,300 twin pairs. The use of child-specific measures in a multivariate genetic analysis made it possible to investigate the genetic and environmental origins of the covariation between children's experience of chaos in the home and their school achievement.

RESULTS

Children's experience of family chaos and their school achievement were significantly correlated in the expected negative direction (r = -.26). As expected, shared environmental factors explained a large proportion (63%) of the association. However, genetic factors accounted for a significant proportion (37%) of the association between children's experience of household chaos and their school performance.

CONCLUSIONS

The association between chaotic homes and poor performance in school, previously assumed to be entirely environmental in origin, is in fact partly genetic. How children's home environment affects their academic achievement is not simply in the direction environment → child → outcome. Instead, genetic factors that influence children's experience of the disordered home environment also affect how well they do at school. The relationship between the child, their environment and their performance at school is complex: both genetic and environmental factors play a role.

Individual Differences in Early Numeracy

In this study, the question was raised how basic cognitive processes are related to math abilities and how it can be best determined which children are at risk for developing those disabilities. The role of four distinct basic processes in the development of early mathematics was investigated: executive functions, fluid intelligence, subitizing, and language. The counting skills of 115 five- and six-year-old children were also assessed. The results showed that both executive functions and number sense were important factors in children's development of counting skills. Both executive functions and subitizing explained a significant part of variance in children's counting skills. IQ scores could not add further explanation to the variance in early math. The implications of this study are that it seems promising to use the concept of executive functions for the early identification of children at risk for math learning difficulties.

The Relative Effect of Size at Birth, Postnatal Growth and Social Factors on Cognitive Function in Late Childhood

PURPOSE

To investigate if fetal, head, and somatic postnatal growth are independent predictors of cognition and estimate their relative importance compared to the effect size of social factors on cognitive function at 10 years.

METHODS

Longitudinal population-based data from the birth questionnaire and the 5- and 10-year sweeps of the 1970 British Birth Cohort Study were used, including 11,244 subjects. Multiple linear regression and structural equation modeling were used in the statistical analysis. Standardized coefficients were used to measure and compare effect sizes.

RESULTS

Fetal growth, head, and somatic postnatal growth were significant independent predictors of cognition at age 10. These associations remained even among children born within the normal birth-weight range and those who did not experience neonatal problems. Effect of head size on cognition was greater than the effect of birth weight. Weight at 10 had a small negative effect on cognition. Gestational age was not directly associated with cognitive function, but it had a weak indirect effect. Parent's socioeconomic status was strongly associated with child's cognitive function.

CONCLUSION

Although effect sizes of prenatal and postnatal growth on cognition are modest compared with the strong effect size of social factors, they might have greater impact at the population level, since most children are born without low birth weight.