# Multifaceted Home Environment Interacting with Brain Networks Beyond Socioeconomic Circumstances

> **NIH NIH F31** · VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY · 2022 · $31,504

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Household socioeconomic status (SES) is a major contributor to child brain and cognitive growth, and related
to their future educational and occupational outcomes. Lower-SES adversities hinder children's executive
functions (EF) and language, which impede their classroom performance. Lower-SES children also have lower
literacy and language due to impoverished home literacy and language environment (HLE). Lower SES and
HLE exacerbate children's classroom difficulties. Yet, despite lower-SES disadvantages, some families are
attuned to and foster their children's academic goals and actively enrich HLE. When lower-SES families have
access to HLE enrichment programs, such experiences can scaffold gains in literacy and language outcomes.
That is, enriched HLE mitigates the adverse impacts of lower SES on child development. Given the critical role
of early cognitive skills in classroom performance, understanding the ways household SES versus HLE affects
child development, especially brain growth, provides key implications for policymaking and interventions.
 Lower SES negatively impacts brain structure and function, centrally within the brain networks that support
EF and language. After accounting for SES effect, recent studies report that HLE taps brain networks linked to
literacy and language, suggesting a protective mechanism. Interestingly, our preliminary results revealed that
HLE also overlaps with SES in explaining differences in brain regions subserving EF. Given the role of EF in
reading and language, this suggests a potential additive mechanism. But, these studies focus exclusively on
how frequently parents and children read together, which thereby narrows the multifaceted nature of HLE.
 To unpack child socioeconomic circumstances, we examine how brain networks link to specific dimensions
of a multifaceted HLE (m-HLE). We drew upon prior behavioral literature, and compiled a comprehensive
measure for m-HLE. Not only do we account for child-initiated HLE, we also capture the quantity and quality of
parent-initiated HLE. We hypothesize that the ways dimensions of m-HLE interact with different brain networks
contribute to mediate and/or moderate the impact of SES on child outcomes. Our first aim focuses on how m-
HLE versus SES affect brain, and in turn child outcomes. While SES will predict brain regions subserving EF
and language, we anticipate that m-HLE will contribute to brain regions that support language and literacy.
Though parents are not always available, such that children likely recruit self-regulation and voluntarily initiate
HLE, which may also tap EF brain regions. Our second aim examines whether and how m-HLE interacts with
the brain to mitigate lower-SES adversity. We speculate that, despite lower SES, children with enriched m-HLE
will exhibit similar interaction between brain networks as their higher-SES peers to scaffold positive outcomes.
 Results from this proposal will fill critical gaps in understanding how...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10290309
- **Project number:** 5F31HD104385-02
- **Recipient organization:** VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Tin Nguyen
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $31,504
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-01-01 → 2022-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10290309

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10290309, Multifaceted Home Environment Interacting with Brain Networks Beyond Socioeconomic Circumstances (5F31HD104385-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10290309. Licensed CC0.

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