SES, Stress and Selective Attention: Can the autonomic nervous system shed light on why low SES children

Research suggests that children from low socio-economic status backgrounds (low-SES) under-perform in
academic settings. Differences between children from high and low-SES backgrounds get bigger over time. Why is
this, and what can be done about it?
It is known that children from low-SES backgrounds experience higher early-life stress - indicated by
physiological markers. In this study we propose investigating, for the first time, how early stress affects learning
capacities in children from low-SES backgrounds. Our hypothesis is that higher levels of stress leads to worse
selective attention, and this in turn affects children's learning capacities in academic settings.
To test this hypothesis we shall assess cross-sectionally 4-month, 12-month, 4-year and 8-year olds from
diverse SES backgrounds, recruited in East London. At each age we shall measure stress, selective attention, and
learning abilities using EEG, autonomic recording, and behavioural assessments.
We predict that, at 4 months, there will be no differences between low and high SES children in the brain's
ability to suppress irrelevant information. But that, over time, children from low-SES backgrounds will show higher
stress levels, and that these changes will associate with poorer selective attention, and, in turn, to worse
performance on the learning assessments.
This project has direct implications for understanding the escalating problems related to stress, and
childhood poverty. It may lead to direct, and novel, intervention techniques for ameliorating these problems.
This co-hosted project will exploit UEL's cutting-edge focus on low-SES children and the large research
community at the CEN and Birkbeck/UCL interested in translational neuroscience.