A recent article in The Washington Post cited a new study published in Nature Neuroscience which found that poor children have smaller brains than their more affluent peers. The study examined nearly 1,100 children ranging in age from 3-20 and found that the brains of children from families who earned less than $25,000 a year had surface areas 6 percent smaller than those whose families earned $150,000 or more. Additionally, the low-income children scored lower on average on a battery of cognitive tests.
Of the findings, senior author, Elizabeth Sowell explains, “We’ve known for so long that poverty and lack of access to resources to enrich the developmental environment are related to poor school performance, poor test scores and fewer educational opportunities, But now we can really tie it to a physical thing in the brain. We realized that this is a big deal.”
A big deal, yes, but not one that is beyond repair. Lead researcher Kimberly Noble offers hope in the brain’s ability to grow in both size and cognitive ability, “The brain is incredibly plastic, incredibly able to be molded by experience, especially in childhood. These changes are not immutable.”
With readiness and achievement gaps beginning long before a child enters kindergarten, the earlier we can address these gaps, the better. Research shows that high quality early education can close up to half the achievement gap.
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Read the Washington Post’s full article here.