In comparison with children living in low-income urban areas, children from low-income rural areas score better in verbal memory tests and worse in visual memory tests, according to a study published in the Journal of Cognition and Development by education professor Michele Tine.
While researchers have drawn connections between poverty and cognitive development before, Tine's study expands on previous findings by considering socioeconomic status and location's effects on both verbal and visual working memory skills.
People depend on working memory to hold and manipulate memories in their minds. Working memory, a combination of verbal and visual memory, is a strong predictor of academic success and is also correlated with IQ.
In addition to showing that low-income urban and rural children differ in their working memory abilities, Tine also determined that low-income children have poorer overall working memory than high-income children, a finding consistent with previous reports.
The study measured 186 sixth-grade students from high-income rural, low-income rural, high-income urban and low-income urban schools.
The tests administered were part of the Automated Working Memory Assessment and were standardized for the participants' age range.
Tine offered several hypotheses for the gap in working memory between low-income urban children and low-income rural children.
Because chronic noise pollution has a negative effect on verbal working memory, the higher noise pollution in urban settings may explain the lower verbal working memory scores of the low-income urban children. Similarly, children in rural environments tend to have less exposure to visual stimuli such as traffic, crowds, building signs, and lights.
As a result, children in rural poverty may not use their visual working memory as frequently as children in urban poverty do, which may hinder its development.
Cognitive differences between urban and rural children were only seen at low-income schools. High-income children in rural schools did not perform significantly differently than their urban counterparts.
Tine said she has received positive feedback about her findings.
"Everyone looks forward to future work that can help determine the causes and effects of the distinct verbal and visuospatial working memory abilities that were uncovered in this study," she said.
Tine's background in teaching inspired her work.
"I started off my professional career as a fifth grade teacher in an under-resourced area and I noticed that my students seemed to process information in ways that were fundamentally different than students I had taught from more affluent areas," she said.
These encounters helped Tine realize that the achievement gap is far more complex than just low-income students lagging behind their high-income counterparts, she said, and her findings have a practical application.
"In order to be the best teacher I could be, I needed to thoroughly understand the fundamental differences between different learners," she said.
Tine now heads the education department's Poverty and Learning Lab.
The study, funded by the Rockefeller Center, adds to the large body of work on the effects of poverty on children. The nuances of socioeconomic status combined with physical location have yet to be significantly investigated.
Kellie MacPhee '14, who was a Presidential Scholar in Tine's lab, said she admires Tine's work.
"She was wonderful," MacPhee said. "This is really an important study in showing something that hasn't been explored yet."
Other professors in the education department did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
Tine's article is titled "Working Memory Differences Between Children Living in Rural and Urban Poverty."