memory, inhibition, or other components. There is a progressive development of inhibitory function and the prefrontal areas of the brain.
Thus, younger children are less efficient in inhibiting behavior than older children that will improve this ability with age Brocki and Bohlin Although working memory can be considered as a subcomponent of executive functions Blair et al. In its classic formulation, working memory consists of separate storage buffers for verbal and visuospatial content, as well as executive processes that act upon the information in the storage buffers Baddeley Besides the study of the influence of a socioeconomic index on the development of those cognitive functions, some authors have studied specific influences of family variables, such as parental education.
The educational level of parents, especially the mother Cesare et al. As Carneiro et al. It seems that more educated mothers are more likely to have better educated husbands, higher income, they are more likely to invest in books, special lessons and materials like computers for their children and those things could explain the maternal education impact in children cognitive development Carneiro et al.
In this study, one of the research questions is to investigate the specific role of parental education, as a separate variable of the SES, asking which SES variables actually impact in neuropsychological development. Although it has been demonstrated that better environmental conditions are associated with better performance in neuropsychological tasks Evans and Fuller-Rowell ; Noble and Farah , some studies found no differences associated to the socioeconomic status in the performance of executive functions inhibitory control Wiebe et al.
This lack of effect can be partly explained by sample performance homogeneity Wiebe et al. In Engel et al. Miranda et al. So, it seems the results from those Brazilian studies run into methodological obstacles that have produced biases in their research and hindered the analysis of their data.
In short, family SES in childhood seems to affect the general cognitive performance IQ but some neuropsychological systems more than in others, particularly memory episodic, working and semantic , oral and written language and executive functions Hackman et al. Starting from the importance of empirically investigate this issue and provide evidence to support prevention and intervention programs in child development, the aim of this study was to compare the effect of family SES and specifically parental education between age ranges regarding IQ performance, language oral and written , memory episodic, semantic and working and executive functions inhibitory components and cognitive flexibility, in particular in children from 6 to 12 years old.
The hypothesis was that the relationship between low socioeconomic status including low parental education and lower performance in IQ and in the assessed tasks Ardila et al. This study intends to give a better comprehension about this issue in Brazil, providing evidences from a large sample, using classical measures of SES and neuropsychological tasks based on traditional paradigms besides IQ measures , with robust statistical analysis, that could be the basis for rethinking public policies that promote child development.
This is a quantitative, descriptive-explanatory study. The dependent variables are IQ and performance in tasks that assess language, verbal memory, working memory and executive functions. The independent variables are children age, parental education and family socioeconomic status according to a survey of the Brazilian Association of Research Companies - ABEP , an index combining parental education and income that characterizes the family socioeconomic status.
A total of Brazilian children selected by convenience sampling, The children, without grade repetition, monolinguals basic English classes in their schools and native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, with no history of neurological or psychiatric illnesses, uncorrected auditory and visual impairments, accordi