Socioeconomic Neurogradients of Attention: An ERP Study

This study examined children’s socioeconomic neurogradients of selective attention. Indices of contextual socioeconomic family status (SES) and early development experience, the Early Development Instrument (EDI), were related to behavioural and neural correlates of an auditory oddball task in a sample including 52 preadolescent children (Aged 12-14 years) stratified according to SES: High (n = 14), Middle (n = 20), and Low (n = 18). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while children were asked to emit or withhold response to a series of rare/frequent and target/distracter tones. Despite SES-dependent differences in midline ERPs, children from the High- and Low-SES showed similar behavioural patterns with high performance. However, the Mid-SES group showed a markedly different performance pattern than their High-SES counterpart, correlated with differences in both ERP and EDI measurements. Confirming the joint role of SES and early childhood, these findings further our understanding of neuroimaging data across diverse experiential developmental contexts.