Research on childhood poverty from a Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective: Examples of Studies in Argentina

LIPINA, SEBASTIAN J.; SEGRETIN, M. SOLEDAD; HERMIDA, MARÍA JULIA; COLOMBO, JORGE A.

Handbook of Mental Health of Children and Adolescents

SAGE

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2013; p. 256 - 274

The study of the underlying mechanisms involved in child poverty and development, as well as the design of interventions aimed at modifying them, require the incorporation of multidisciplinary frameworks. Effects of poverty on child development involve alterations and impacts on biological, cognitive and psychosocial development throughout lifespan. Many of these effects may be mediated by the impact of multiple mechanisms which include several environmental risk and protective factors present in nearly all the developmental contexts where children grow up -home, school, and community, and individual susceptibility as well. Cognitive Neuroscience research revealed that development of the cognitive systems related to control, numeracy and literacy competences show plasticity during brain organization. Considering the mechanisms that underlie the relationship between cognition and achievement, allow to open new avenues to investigating and understanding the socioeconomic gaps in several cognitive and learning competences. In addition, this approach may reveal different socioeconomic-related factors playing several mediating roles across different cognitive systems. Over the last ten years, increasingly neuroscientists have begun to join collaborative efforts with other social scientists and educators to contribute, both conceptually and methodologically, in the study of poverty effects on basic cognitive processes and intervention efforts. Two examples from Argentina of this type of intervention programs aimed at optimizing cognitive control processing of preschoolers from low-income homes are presented for illustrative purposes.