Faculty Collaboration Database

The relationship between maternal education and the neural substrates of phoneme perception in children: Interactions between socioeconomic status and proficiency level. Brain Lang 2017 Aug;171:14-22

Date

04/25/2017

Pubmed ID

28437659

Pubmed Central ID

PMC5602599

DOI

10.1016/j.bandl.2017.03.010

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-85018479219 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   25 Citations

Abstract

Relationships between maternal education (ME) and both behavioral performances and brain activation during the discrimination of phonemic and nonphonemic sounds were examined using fMRI in children with different levels of phoneme categorization proficiency (CP). Significant relationships were found between ME and intellectual functioning and vocabulary, with a trend for phonological awareness. A significant interaction between CP and ME was seen for nonverbal reasoning abilities. In addition, fMRI analyses revealed a significant interaction between CP and ME for phonemic discrimination in left prefrontal cortex. Thus, ME was associated with differential patterns of both neuropsychological performance and brain activation contingent on the level of CP. These results highlight the importance of examining SES effects at different proficiency levels. The pattern of results may suggest the presence of neurobiological differences in the children with low CP that affect the nature of relationships with ME.

Author List

Conant LL, Liebenthal E, Desai A, Binder JR

Author

Jeffrey R. Binder MD Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of Wisconsin

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Awareness
Child
Child Development
Educational Status
Female
Humans
Language
Linguistics
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Phonetics
Social Class
Sound
Speech Perception
Vocabulary