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Mental Rotation in American Children: Diminished Returns of Parental Education in Black Families

Background: While parental education and family socioeconomic status (SES) are associated with an increase in children’s cognitive functioning, and less is known about racial variation in these effects. Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs) suggest that, under racism and social stratification, famil...

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Autor principal: Assari, Shervin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7717656/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33233814
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pediatric12030028
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author Assari, Shervin
author_facet Assari, Shervin
author_sort Assari, Shervin
collection PubMed
description Background: While parental education and family socioeconomic status (SES) are associated with an increase in children’s cognitive functioning, and less is known about racial variation in these effects. Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs) suggest that, under racism and social stratification, family SES and particularly parental education show weaker effects on children’s tangible outcomes for marginalized, racialized, and minoritized families, particularly Blacks, compared to Whites. Aim: We conducted this study to compare the effect of parental education on children’s mental rotation abilities, as an important aspect of cognitive function, by race. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 11,135 9–10-year-old American children. Data came from baseline of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. The independent variable was parental education. The dependent variable, mental rotation, was measured by the Little Man Task. Ethnicity, gender, age, marital status, and household income were the covariates. Results: Parental education was positively associated with mental rotation. However, parental education showed a weaker association with mental rotation in Black than in White families. This was documented by a significant interaction between race and parental education on children’s efficiency score. Conclusion: Parental education shows a weaker correlation with mental rotation of Black rather than White children, which is probably because of racism, social stratification, and discrimination. This finding is in line with the MDRs phenomenon and suggests that marginalization and racism may interfere with the influences of parental assets and resources and Black American children’s development.
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spelling pubmed-77176562020-12-05 Mental Rotation in American Children: Diminished Returns of Parental Education in Black Families Assari, Shervin Pediatr Rep Article Background: While parental education and family socioeconomic status (SES) are associated with an increase in children’s cognitive functioning, and less is known about racial variation in these effects. Minorities’ Diminished Returns (MDRs) suggest that, under racism and social stratification, family SES and particularly parental education show weaker effects on children’s tangible outcomes for marginalized, racialized, and minoritized families, particularly Blacks, compared to Whites. Aim: We conducted this study to compare the effect of parental education on children’s mental rotation abilities, as an important aspect of cognitive function, by race. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 11,135 9–10-year-old American children. Data came from baseline of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. The independent variable was parental education. The dependent variable, mental rotation, was measured by the Little Man Task. Ethnicity, gender, age, marital status, and household income were the covariates. Results: Parental education was positively associated with mental rotation. However, parental education showed a weaker association with mental rotation in Black than in White families. This was documented by a significant interaction between race and parental education on children’s efficiency score. Conclusion: Parental education shows a weaker correlation with mental rotation of Black rather than White children, which is probably because of racism, social stratification, and discrimination. This finding is in line with the MDRs phenomenon and suggests that marginalization and racism may interfere with the influences of parental assets and resources and Black American children’s development. MDPI 2020-11-20 /pmc/articles/PMC7717656/ /pubmed/33233814 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pediatric12030028 Text en © 2020 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Assari, Shervin
Mental Rotation in American Children: Diminished Returns of Parental Education in Black Families
title Mental Rotation in American Children: Diminished Returns of Parental Education in Black Families
title_full Mental Rotation in American Children: Diminished Returns of Parental Education in Black Families
title_fullStr Mental Rotation in American Children: Diminished Returns of Parental Education in Black Families
title_full_unstemmed Mental Rotation in American Children: Diminished Returns of Parental Education in Black Families
title_short Mental Rotation in American Children: Diminished Returns of Parental Education in Black Families
title_sort mental rotation in american children: diminished returns of parental education in black families
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7717656/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33233814
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pediatric12030028
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