Research on childhood poverty as an ecologial model for the integration of developmental health and social sciences.

LIPINA, SEBASTIAN J.

Bergen (Noruega)

Conferencia; Conference on Poverty, Development and Health in Latin America; 2009

University of Bergen

Since both child poverty and development are characterized by their multidimensional nature, the study of the underlying mechanisms involved in their interactions, as well as the design of interventions aimed at modifying them, require the incorporation of multidisciplinary frameworks that consider different epistemological, historic, cultural, ethical and ideological issues. Effects of poverty on development involve multiple alterations and impacts physical growth, as well as cognitive and psychosocial development throughout lifespan. Many of these effects may be mediated by the impact of multiple environmental risk factors, present in nearly all the developmental contexts where children grow up -home, school, and community. As it is possible that policies that involve implementation of interventions that directly target the factors that mediate the harmful effect of poverty on human development, basic and applied experimental research may make important contributions to understanding the mediating factors by which poverty negatively affect child development, and may help to design and evaluate interventions. Cognitive Neuroscience research revealed that development of the neurocognitive systems related to control, numeracy and literacy competences show plasticity during brain organization and reorganization processes. These findings have started to be applied to interventions in the form of promising training programs aimed at inducing brain activation and behavioural changes in normal and disordered children. Considering the neurobiological 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, neurocognitive analysis may reveal different socioeconomic-related factors playing several mediating roles across neurocognitive systems. Over the last ten years, increasingly neuroscientists have begun to join collaborative efforts with other social scientists to contribute, both conceptually and methodologically, in the study of poverty effects on basic cognitive processes. This lecture seeks to outline the contributions and potential of these cognitive neuroscience collaborations on poverty and child development.