Bick, Johanna R.2024-01-202024-01-20August 2022023-08https://hdl.handle.net/10657/15964Increasing evidence from behavioral and neuroimaging studies indicates that early life experiences scaffold brain development to support learning and cognitive outcomes. Children reared in contexts of socioeconomic disadvantage may be exposed to fewer and less consistent learning opportunities, among other stressors, which undermines their abilities to reach full neurodevelopmental potential. Alterations in implicit learning processes, such as statistical learning, that support cognitive and language development are under-investigated in contexts of socioeconomic disadvantage. Uncovering these associations may reveal novel neurodevelopmental and behavioral pathways that underpin risk for prospective academic and language delays. The present study utilized functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to test whether exposure to poverty and extreme socioeconomic disadvantage was associated with neural activity during an auditory statistical learning task in an early childhood sample. We hypothesized that poverty would associate with neural activation patterns in cortical regions associated with language and executive function, including the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG0 and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). We also explored whether metrics of parent-child communication patterns, such as the total amount of turns and proportion of turn-taking, served as potential experiential factors that drive neural activation differences. Our results indicated that socioeconomic disadvantage was associated with alterations in neural activation patterns during statistical learning process at left IFG and left DLPFC. Parent-child communication pattern, as measured by total amount of turns and proportion of turn-taking, was also correlated with neural activation patterns during statistical learning at regions subserving language development. Findings from the current study further verified the importance of early environment in the development of neural mechanisms subserving implicit learning processes that are predictive of key cognitive and language outcomes in critical developmental periods of early childhood.application/pdfengThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).socioeconomic statusstatistical learning2024-01-20Thesisborn digital