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

> **NIH NIH R03** · UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE · 2022 · $65,593

## 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 organization:** UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
- **Principal Investigator:** Stephanie N Del Tufo
- **Activity code:** R03 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $65,593
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2021-08-20 → 2024-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10621056

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10621056, The impact of socioeconomic status on the neurobiological underpinnings of reading. (3R03HD104051-02S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-29 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10621056. Licensed CC0.

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