The impact of socioeconomic status on the neurobiological underpinnings of reading.

NIH RePORTER · NIH · R03 · $65,593 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract Literacy proficiency has a lasting impact on one’s postsecondary success and attainment, intergenerational and socioeconomic mobility, and long-term health outcomes. Many of our nation’s students have inadequate reading skills that require effective instructional approaches and interventions. However, many of these interventions do not show sustained reading success longitudinally. The parent grant aims to determine and predict the intra- individual impact of neurobiological compensatory mechanisms on reading development, across the socioeconomic continuum. In tandem with the typical brain regions that encompass the reading network, poorer readers recruit additional, compensatory brain regions to support reading proficiency. The parent grant capitalizes on longitudinal extent data to examine the interaction of the neurobiological reading network with those compensatory regions. The aims of this diversity supplement are subordinate. The proposed study focuses on a specific parent grant covariate: socioeconomic status. Specifically, we focus on individual differences in neurobiological development that emerge during the process of learning to read predicted by differences in socioeconomic status. Less attention has focused on the socioeconomic factors that contribute to these differences in the neurobiology of reading development. Yet, we know that students at socioeconomic disadvantage have disproportionately low reading achievement rates. Therefore, the aim of this supplement is to examine how socioeconomic factors, such as income, parental educational attainment, and stress, contribute to differences in the neurobiological underpinnings of reading development. Specifically, this supplement will examine how social, economic, and biological indices of socioeconomic status differentially, and similarly, influence the functional connectivity of the neurobiological reading network and its associated compensatory regions. By capitalizing on extant data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) database, longitudinal data will be examined to investigate the process of reading development across the reading ability continuum.

Key facts

NIH application ID
10621056
Project number
3R03HD104051-02S1
Recipient
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
Principal Investigator
Stephanie N Del Tufo
Activity code
R03
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2022
Award amount
$65,593
Award type
3
Project period
2021-08-20 → 2024-07-31