Penn Psychologist Finds Correlation Between Working Memory and Socioeconomic Status in Children

Working memory—the ability to hold information in your mind, think about it, and use it to guide behavior—develops through childhood and adolescence and is key for successful performance at school and work. Previous research with young children has documented socioeconomic disparities in performance on tasks of working memory.

Now, a new longitudinal study conducted by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and West Chester University has found that differences in working memory that exist at age 10 persist through the end of adolescence. The study also found that parents’ education, one common measure of socioeconomic status, is related to children’s performance on tasks of working memory, while neighborhood characteristics, another common measure of socioeconomic status, are not.

The study was led by Walter H. Annenberg Professor in the Natural Sciences Martha Farah, as well as then-graduate student Daniel Hackman, both of the Department of Psychology. They collaborated with Laura Betancourt, Nancy Brodsky, and Hallam Hurt of CHOP, Daniel Romer of Penn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center, and Robert Gallop of West Chester University.

The study was published in the journal Child Development and funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and National Institute of Mental Health.

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