ABSTRACT Neighborhood disadvantage encompasses multiple co‐occurring adversities, including threat and deprivation, yet its underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. Applying a dimensional framework to neighborhood contexts may help clarify how distinct features of disadvantage influence brain development. Here, we used representational similarity analysis to investigate associations between adolescents’ neural representations of affective valence and neighborhood disadvantage, as measured by caregiver self‐report and the Area Deprivation Index (ADI). One hundred and twenty‐one adolescents aged 11 to 14 ( M age = 12.81 years old, 52.07% female, 28.93% White non‐Hispanic) completed an emotional reactivity fMRI task. Caregiver‐reported neighborhood disadvantage was associated with greater representational similarity in right amygdala between negative and neutral images, while no such effect emerged for the ADI. Follow‐up analyses examined whether specific dimensions of disadvantage drove these effects. Although our measure did not map cleanly onto threat and deprivation dimensions, factor analyses revealed distinctions between social (e.g., crime, loitering) and physical (e.g., abandoned buildings, walkability) disadvantage‐related items; our preliminary findings suggest that the effects of reported overall neighborhood disadvantage may be driven by characteristics of the social environment. No associations between caregiver‐reported neighborhood disadvantage or ADI were observed for positive/neutral similarity. These findings provide preliminary evidence that neighborhood disadvantage may impact the amygdala's differentiation of negative and neutral stimuli during early adolescence, supporting the view that neighborhoods are a critical ecological context for development.
ABSTRACT Background Socioeconomic disadvantage is widely associated with poorer cognitive and educational outcomes. However, emerging evidence suggests that children in low‐income contexts may demonstrate resilience in executive function (EF) development. This study examined the predictors of EF in South African preschoolers from disadvantaged communities to identify modifiable, context‐specific influences. Methods 125 Children (aged 3–5 years) and their caregivers were recruited from 15 early childhood centers in Cape Town. Children completed three tablet‐based EF tasks from the Early Years Toolbox measuring working memory, inhibition, shifting, while caregivers reported on demographic variables, household assets, child sleep, child screen time, child exposure to violence, and parenting practices. Multiple linear regressions examined predictors of child EF, with exploratory analyses on a subset ( n = 22) for hair cortisol analysis. Results Older child age ( β = 0.37, p < 0.001), caregiver secondary education ( β = 0.22, p = 0.003), and fewer sleep difficulties ( β = –0.45, p = 0.042) significantly predicted higher child EF scores, together explaining 25% of variance. Household assets, screen time, violence exposure, and parenting scores were non‐significant. In the subsample, hair cortisol concentration correlated positively with EF ( ρ = 0.55, p = 0.009), suggesting potential adaptive calibration under adversity. Conclusions Findings highlight that modifiable proximal factors (e.g., caregiver education and child sleep) shape EF development more strongly than socioeconomic indicators. Results challenge the presumed universality of SES‐EF gradients and underscore the importance of culturally grounded, contextually validated measures for understanding resilience and early cognitive development in Majority World settings.
ABSTRACT Human competencies in object recognition and category generalization implicate representations of the 3D geometry of objects. There is no accepted account of how such object‐centric representations are formed. Toddlers’ manual and visual exploration of objects is strongly associated with their emerging abilities in object recognition and category generalization, although there is limited understanding of the processes that underlie this association. Building on Marr and Nishihara's seminal theory of shape, we proposed (1) that toddlers actively select views that optimize fundamental visual sensitivities for long extents and for edges oriented horizontally and vertically and (2) that these biased views result in the axis of the object's maximum elongation, the major axis, being stably present in the variable 2D shapes projected from the object to the eye. We analyzed the visual properties of toddlers’ ( n = 90, 12–38 months) egocentric views as they manipulated objects. We observed a highly biased sampling of object views in which the major axis of the physical object is near maximal extension and oriented near horizontal or vertical, two properties that make the major axis stably determinable in the variable 2D shapes projected to the eye. The findings show how fundamental low‐level visual sensitivities may play a critical developmental role in biasing behaviors that bias the input in ways that make hard computational problems tractable. The findings also provide an empirical agenda for research focused on the development of object‐centric representations of 3D shape. Summary We examined the visual properties of toddlers’ egocentric views of objects. We found that the generated views were a selective sampling of possible views that optimized foundational low‐level visual properties for shape perception. The findings implicate strong intrinsic constraints on toddlers’ visual experiences of object views. The biases in the toddler generated views are consistent with class theories of object‐centric representations of 3‐dimensional geometry.
ABSTRACT Children living in conditions of severe socioeconomic (SES) hardship are at elevated risk for neurocognitive delays, yet most developmental neuroscience research has focused on children in high‐income, Western populations, limiting our understanding of diverse developmental contexts. This study examined maternal perceived social support as a potential buffer against the stressors associated with SES hardship on child neurocognitive development in a longitudinal sample of Indigenous families in the rural Ecuadorian Amazon. Twenty‐eight children ( M age = 28.02 months at T1; 57.6 months at T2) participated in the study completing an assessment of early cognitive ability at T1 and an inhibition task while functional near‐infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) measured cortical activation at T2. A three‐level linear mixed model revealed a significant interaction between early cognitive ability and maternal perceived social support on functional activation. Specifically, children of mothers with high social support showed no association between early cognitive ability and cortical activation, while those with low support exhibited atypical patterns (hyper‐ or hypoactivation), suggesting that increased maternal perceived social support may help buffer the risk exposure of chronic stressors associated with SES hardship. These findings underscore the importance of culturally embedded social resources in promoting resilience among children facing cumulative risk. Supporting maternal social networks may be a promising pathway for improving child neurodevelopment in underrepresented, low‐resource communities and contributes to more inclusive global models of brain development.
ABSTRACT Children learn language from their social partners, and differences in the behavior of these social partners can influence language learning outcomes. The literature largely focuses on adult caregivers; however, there is less clarity regarding the extent to which the social behavior of peers might also impact children's language learning. Children spend a large proportion of their time with peers once they enter preschool; peers are thus an important source of input for learning. Moreover, preschoolers are not just interacting with individual peers but also with groups of peers. To explore the impact of peers’ social behavior on preschoolers’ word learning, the present study manipulated peer behavior at two levels: individual peers and the peer group context. Forty‐four preschoolers (36‐60 months) completed a tablet task in which they watched a series of animated videos of a classroom. Participants were exposed to (1) either a positive or negative social group (manipulated between‐subjects) and (2) a positive and negative individual (manipulated within‐subjects). Participants were then taught four novel object‐label pairings by the children in the video. We measured preschoolers’ accuracy in learning these novel object‐label pairs. Overall, preschoolers learned the words above chance and there was no difference in learning from the positive and negative individual peers. However, participants learned words significantly better in the positive group than in the negative group. This pattern of results suggests that peer groups, and the overall affective context of children's learning environments, may play important roles in boosting preschoolers’ language learning trajectories.
