Socioeconomic status related differences in resting state EEG activity correspond to differences in vocabulary and working memory in grade school

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that children from low income homes exhibit differences in brain, language and cognitive development. To better understand these differences and how they relate to one another, we compared the resting state EEG of forty-five 8-15-year-olds from low-income homes and 45 age and sex matched children from higher income homes who completed a battery of language and cognitive assessments. Children from low income homes performed worse on language tasks and exhibited differences in resting state EEG including more theta and less alpha power. To investigate the relationship between language, cognition and resting state EEG we performed multiple regression analyses. Better working memory was related to lower resting state theta power. There was an interaction between alpha and vocabulary, such that only for children from low income homes, greater resting state alpha was related to higher vocabulary scores. Both relationships held when controlling for resting state changes in the other frequency band, indicating they are somewhat independent effects. These findings shed new light on SES, neural development and cognitive and language outcomes in school-aged children.

Keywords: Language development; Resting state EEG; Socioeconomic status; Working memory.