Studies have shown that students from a lower socioeconomic status (SES) background are more likely to have difficulty with educational attainment than those from a higher SES background. In a recent study focusing on determining the specific shortcomings caused by SES, a team of MIT neuroscientists uncovered more about the differences that lower-SES students and higher-SES students have with reading.
According to the study, when students from higher-SES backgrounds struggle with reading, it is usually because of differences in their ability to piece sounds together into words, known as phonological processing. In contrast, when students from lower-SES backgrounds struggle with reading, it is due to differences in their ability to rapidly name words or letters, which is associated with orthographic processing or visual interpretation of words and letters. Brain scans conducted during phonological and orthographic processing confirmed this pattern.
These differences suggest that different types of interventions may be necessary for different groups of children, and also highlight the importance of including a wide range of socioeconomic status levels in studies of reading or other types of academic learning. For example, a 2017 study by Gabrieli, Romeo, and others found that a summer reading intervention that focused on developing the sensory and cognitive processing necessary for reading was more beneficial for students from lower-SES backgrounds than for children from higher-SES backgrounds. “No matter why a child is struggling with reading, they need the education and the attention to support them. Studies that try to tease out the underlying factors can help us in tailoring educational interventions to what a child needs,” says Romeo, a researcher at the University of Maryland.
Research into the effects of SES helps educators to tailor learning strategies most effectively for individual learners and produce the best outcomes for everyone.
Tags: children, dyslexia, learning, learning disabilities, reading, schoolCategorised in: Uncategorized
This post was written by Evelyn Eekels