ldren are more likely to reside in an environment that exhibits sharply lower attainment levels and, in addition, that repeatedly manifests higher rates of crime, divorce, unemployment, and population density than high SES children. On the other hand, parents with high educational level tend to have substantially better educated spouses and higher family income.
Also, they are more likely to invest in their children through books, providing special lessons, or availability of a computer, for example Carneiro et al. That exposure to written material is essential for language development Marturano and there is evidence that children whose parents read to them when they are very young are more prepared for the development of reading when they enter school due to their early contact with books Duursma et al.
Moreover, some aspects of phonological awareness, one of the best predictors of proficient reading Foy and Mann , depend on exposure to reading and home literacy Kim ; Foy and Mann , which also affects word recognition Peeters et al. Mothers with higher educational level seem to be more likely to read frequently to their children than mothers with lower levels of education Kuo et al.
It was showed that SES has an effect on memory. Dynamic models of multiple components, such as the sociocultural theory Nelson and Fivush , explains that memory development occurs through social interaction and cognitive development over the years.
In the present study, children from socioeconomically disadvantaged households had poorer performance than those with high SES, especially until nine years old. According to Gathercole , the basic structure of the working memory is formed at the age of six years, but the capacity of each component increases until adolescence. The main change that occurs during the development of working memory is the increase in the operational efficiency and speed of information processing, as well as greater use of strategies in problem solving, skills that are influenced by the experiences of children in the family environment Diamond and Lee ; Gathercole and Baddeley Regarding the visuospatial component of the working memory, in those cases where visuospatial processing is very complex, the central executive component is triggered to assist in solving the task Gathercole and Baddeley In turn, these skills are influenced by the experiences of children in the family environment — opportunities to perform tasks and demands of the environment that require the use of strategies to memorize information, for example — at school, and, thus, from the SES Nelson and Fivush In the present study, a significant contribution of the SES and parental education especially maternal to the latent variable executive functions was detected.
The inhibitory control assessed by go-no go tasks for example occurs late in childhood. At 10 years of age, the ability to inhibit attention to irrelevant stimuli and motor responses is fairly complete, being usually mastered at the age of 12 Romine and Reynolds In agreement with this assumption, in this study, it was found that only between 10 and 12 years, the difference in the go- no go task regarding SES was significant, and low SES children performing poorer in this task compared to those from higher SES.
Models that include environmental, biological and cognitive factors try to explain the development of executive functions Blair and Ursache ; Stuss They integrate the results of empirical research on the physiology of stress, neurocognitive functions and self-regulation and consider the adaptive processes response to adversity of the environment as an aspect of development of the child Blair and Raver For example, Stuss propose a model with three hierarchical levels of processing: sensory-perceptual, executive control and self-reflexivity metacognition , that interacting with the external environment and are mediated by the frontal lobes.
The levels are interrelated and depend on the maturity of primary to higher processes functioning. So, living in an adverse environment could impair the