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Neuroscience of Childhood Poverty: Evidence of Impacts and Mechanisms as Vehicles of Dialog With Ethics

Several studies have identified associations between poverty and development of self-regulation during childhood, which is broadly defined as those skills involved in cognitive, emotional, and stress self-regulation. These skills are influenced by different individual and contextual factors at multi...

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Autores principales: Lipina, Sebastián J., Evers, Kathinka
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5266697/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28184204
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00061
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author Lipina, Sebastián J.
Evers, Kathinka
author_facet Lipina, Sebastián J.
Evers, Kathinka
author_sort Lipina, Sebastián J.
collection PubMed
description Several studies have identified associations between poverty and development of self-regulation during childhood, which is broadly defined as those skills involved in cognitive, emotional, and stress self-regulation. These skills are influenced by different individual and contextual factors at multiple levels of analysis (i.e., individual, family, social, and cultural). Available evidence suggests that the influences of those biological, psychosocial, and sociocultural factors on emotional and cognitive development can vary according to the type, number, accumulation of risks, and co-occurrence of adverse circumstances that are related to poverty, the time in which these factors exert their influences, and the individual susceptibility to them. Complementary, during the past three decades, several experimental interventions that were aimed at optimizing development of self-regulation of children who live in poverty have been designed, implemented, and evaluated. Their results suggest that it is possible to optimize different aspects of cognitive performance and that it would be possible to transfer some aspects of these gains to other cognitive domains and academic achievement. We suggest that it is an important task for ethics, notably but not exclusively neuroethics, to engage in this interdisciplinary research domain to contribute analyses of key concepts, arguments, and interpretations. The specific evidence that neuroscience brings to the analyses of poverty and its implications needs to be spelled out in detail and clarified conceptually, notably in terms of causes of and attitudes toward poverty, implications of poverty for brain development, and for the possibilities to reduce and reverse these effects.
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spelling pubmed-52666972017-02-09 Neuroscience of Childhood Poverty: Evidence of Impacts and Mechanisms as Vehicles of Dialog With Ethics Lipina, Sebastián J. Evers, Kathinka Front Psychol Psychology Several studies have identified associations between poverty and development of self-regulation during childhood, which is broadly defined as those skills involved in cognitive, emotional, and stress self-regulation. These skills are influenced by different individual and contextual factors at multiple levels of analysis (i.e., individual, family, social, and cultural). Available evidence suggests that the influences of those biological, psychosocial, and sociocultural factors on emotional and cognitive development can vary according to the type, number, accumulation of risks, and co-occurrence of adverse circumstances that are related to poverty, the time in which these factors exert their influences, and the individual susceptibility to them. Complementary, during the past three decades, several experimental interventions that were aimed at optimizing development of self-regulation of children who live in poverty have been designed, implemented, and evaluated. Their results suggest that it is possible to optimize different aspects of cognitive performance and that it would be possible to transfer some aspects of these gains to other cognitive domains and academic achievement. We suggest that it is an important task for ethics, notably but not exclusively neuroethics, to engage in this interdisciplinary research domain to contribute analyses of key concepts, arguments, and interpretations. The specific evidence that neuroscience brings to the analyses of poverty and its implications needs to be spelled out in detail and clarified conceptually, notably in terms of causes of and attitudes toward poverty, implications of poverty for brain development, and for the possibilities to reduce and reverse these effects. Frontiers Media S.A. 2017-01-26 /pmc/articles/PMC5266697/ /pubmed/28184204 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00061 Text en Copyright © 2017 Lipina and Evers. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Lipina, Sebastián J.
Evers, Kathinka
Neuroscience of Childhood Poverty: Evidence of Impacts and Mechanisms as Vehicles of Dialog With Ethics
title Neuroscience of Childhood Poverty: Evidence of Impacts and Mechanisms as Vehicles of Dialog With Ethics
title_full Neuroscience of Childhood Poverty: Evidence of Impacts and Mechanisms as Vehicles of Dialog With Ethics
title_fullStr Neuroscience of Childhood Poverty: Evidence of Impacts and Mechanisms as Vehicles of Dialog With Ethics
title_full_unstemmed Neuroscience of Childhood Poverty: Evidence of Impacts and Mechanisms as Vehicles of Dialog With Ethics
title_short Neuroscience of Childhood Poverty: Evidence of Impacts and Mechanisms as Vehicles of Dialog With Ethics
title_sort neuroscience of childhood poverty: evidence of impacts and mechanisms as vehicles of dialog with ethics
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5266697/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28184204
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00061
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