Cognitive sciences and child poverty: facts and challenges

D´ANGIULLI, AMEDEO; LIPINA, SEBASTIAN J.

Boston

Congreso; The neurocognitve science of social inequality: Cross cultural laboratory and community approaches.; 2010

American Psychological Society

Title: The neurocognitive science of social inequality: cross cultural laboratory and community approaches Co-Chairs: Amedeo D’Angiulli & Sebastian Lipina In the context of Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science and Cognitive Neuroscience, the study of poverty and social gradients is a very young area of research where a core consensus of basic results is quickly emerging. However, as any emerging science, the approaches used are still influenced by epistemological or ideological stances inherited from other disciplines (and potentially implicit ideological systems). Inadvertently, these influences can lead this critically important new area of research to methodological and ethical foundational challenges and issues that are in need of debate over and beyond consensus on interventions aiming at the effects of poverty on children’s development (e.g., poverty definition criteria, lack of specificity when considering child poverty in terms of how children experience different type of deprivations, or lack of critics regarding social exclusion in different countries). The risk is a tendency to simplify the complexity that characterizes both phenomena of development and social inequality. In this symposium, neurocognitive researchers will gather to portray the current status in different disciplines addressing social inequities and child development -with focus on mental capital. The main purpose is to house a rich global international critical and synthetic debate with focus on empirical research updates, implications and challenges in Cognitive Science/Neuroscience, Social Sciences and interdisciplinary arena efforts. In this context, the contributions will represent four strategic domains: (1) Cognitive Neuroscience (behavioral and neuroimaging findings in different countries and their implications at social development and educational levels); (2) Social Sciences -Economy, Anthropology/Sociology, Education (updating scientific, ethical and ideological issues on social inequities worldwide, addressing the challenges we are facing: complexity, interdisciplinary efforts); and (3) Interdisciplinary efforts (scientific and policy priorities for the next decade); (4) Neuropsychoendocrinology (relationships between social context and acute/chronic stress across the world).