Temperament predicts processing speed in low socioeconomic status rural preschoolers

MARÍA JULIA HERMIDA; MARÍA SOLEDAD SEGRETIN; DIEGO E. SHALOM; LOPEZ-ROSENFELD, MATÍAS; MARCELO CLAUDIO ABRIL; LIPINA, SEBASTIAN JAVIER; MARIANO SIGMAN

Mind, Brain and Education

Wiley Subscription Services

Año: 2019

1751-2271

Extreme poverty all over the world is con-centrated in rural settings. However, studies about cogni-tion in low socioeconomic status (SES) children are forthe most part conducted in urban populations. This paperinvestigates, in a poor rural sample, what are the individ-ual and socioenvironmental variables that make the dif-ference in performance in a processing speed task. Fortyfour 5-year-old children were evaluated with a processingspeed task; individual and socioenvironmental informationwas obtained from parents? interviews. Higher scores in theeffortful control dimension of temperament were associatedwith higher performance in the processing speed task. Noother individual or socioenvironmental variable predictedthe performance. These results showed that effortful controlis important in processing speed and suggest that in low SESrural contexts, low effortful control children would requirestronger interventions.