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    • Social psychologists have long recognized that the

    2018-11-15

    Social psychologists have long recognized that the circumstances under which we are raised affect how we behave in, and think about, the world. For example, researchers have found that lower-SES children rely more on environmental explanations for events and outcomes, whereas higher-SES children tend to emphasize individual agency (Kraus et al., 2012). Some developmental psychologists suggest that deemphasizing individual agency in the context of school puts students at risk for poorer academic performance (Chapman and Skinner, 1989). There is also evidence, however, that relying on environmental attributions can foster social intelligence. For example, lower-SES adults exhibit greater empathic accuracy than do their higher-SES peers, which is mediated by their tendency to emphasize the role of the environment over that of the individual (Kraus et al., 2010). Similarly, experimental manipulations show that both adults and children assigned to a lower social status condition engage in more prosocial behaviors (Guinote et al., 2015). Overall, social psychological studies of status converge to suggest that lower-SES individuals rely on a framework rooted in contextualism, a belief that the environment plays an important role in shaping cognition and behavior, while higher-SES people rely on a framework of solipsism, which is more focused on the individual (Kraus et al., 2012). Importantly, these frameworks constitute underlying SES-based psychological differences that do not support inferences about the superiority of the different frameworks adopted by lower- or higher-SES individuals. The recognition of psychological differences due to the environment, which are not inherently positive or negative, has been termed cultural relativism (Herskovits, 1948). Cognitive psychologists have generally not integrated the concept of cultural relativism into their research. While a small number of cognitive psychologists have argued that lower-SES children may reach the same level of skill as their higher-SES peers through alternate developmental pathways, which would explain differences in SES at the same level of measured cognition at various ages (D\'Angiulli et al., 2012), most investigators in this field seem to posit that impaired general cognitive functioning underlies the poorer academic performance of lower-SES children. Certainly, it rgd peptide is possible that lower-SES children do, in fact, have poorer cognitive skills than do their higher-SES peers. Alternatively, however, it is also possible that differences in test performance and educational attainment arise in part from other factors, including stereotype threat (Steele, 1997), academic expectations and resources (Tenenbaum and Ruck, 2007), acute distraction due to environmental stressors (Sharkey, 2010), and discomfort in formal academic settings (Walton and Cohen, 2007). In this case, as D\'Angiulli et al. (2012) point out, links between cognitive tests and academic achievement may be nothing more than confirmation of a form of bias such that both of these measures systematically advantage one group over another (Suzuki and Aronson, 2005). Importantly, however, the position within cognitive psychology that lower-SES children have poorer cognitive abilities than do their higher-SES peers has influenced the developing field of the cognitive neuroscience of SES. Cognitive neuroscience offers exciting opportunities to examine how different environments that have been associated with levels of SES affect cognitive development at the level of the brain. Studies in this field can reduce our dependence on behavioral measures of cognition, which, in addition to their general insensitivity (Raizada, 2010; Raizada et al., 2008), may be influenced by confounds such as stereotype threat (Walton and Spencer, 2009) and outcome bias (D\'Angiulli et al., 2012; van de Vijver and Poortinga, 1997). At this point in its development, however, the field of the cognitive neuroscience of SES is also characterized by a distinct set of difficulties. Because the brain is highly plastic and functional specialization is largely dependent on early experiences, complex behaviors can be achieved through non-normative pathways with no discernable reduction in skill (Fox et al., 2010). Given the differing environments of lower- and higher-SES children, it is not surprising that there are SES-related differences in regional brain structure and patterns of functional activation. In this context, however, it is important to recognize that the environmental differences that these neural effects might reflect − more than simply deprivation of experience in lower-SES children − represent a complex amalgamation of varying social and cultural practices. Thus, we should be wary of interpreting nonspecific neural effects that are associated with lower levels of SES as necessarily reflecting SES-related differences in cognitive development.