Dispositional mindfulness: Dissociable affective and cognitive processes.

Mindfulness has been linked to a range of positive social-emotional and cognitive outcomes, but the underlying mechanisms are unclear. As one of the few traits or dispositions that are associated with both affective and cognitive benefits, we asked whether mindfulness is associated with affective and cognitive outcomes through a shared, unitary process or through two dissociable processes. We examined this in adolescents using behavioral measures and also reanalyzed previously reported neuroimaging findings relating mindfulness training to either affect (negative emotion, stress) or cognition (sustained attention). Using multivariate regression analyses, our findings suggest that the relationships between dispositional mindfulness and affective and cognitive processes are behaviorally dissociable and converge with neuroimaging data indicating that mindfulness modulates affect and cognition through separate neural pathways. These findings support the benefits of trait mindfulness on both affective and cognitive processes, and reveal that those benefits are at least partly dissociable in the mind and brain.

Neuroplasticity associated with changes in conversational turn-taking following a family-based intervention.

Children's early language environments are associated with linguistic, cognitive, and academic development, as well as concurrent brain structure and function. This study investigated neurodevelopmental mechanisms linking language input to development by measuring neuroplasticity associated with an intervention designed to enhance language environments of families primarily from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Families of 52 4-to-6 year-old children were randomly assigned to a 9-week, interactive, family-based intervention or no-contact control group. Children completed pre- and post-assessments of verbal and nonverbal cognition (n = 52), structural magnetic resonance imaging (n = 45), and home auditory recordings of language exposure (n = 39). Families who completed the intervention exhibited greater increases in adult-child conversational turns, and changes in turn-taking mediated intervention effects on language and executive functioning measures. Collapsing across groups, turn-taking changes were also positively correlated with cortical thickening in left inferior frontal and supramarginal gyri, the latter of which mediated relationships between changes in turn-taking and children's language development. This is the first study of longitudinal neuroplasticity in response to changes in children's language environments, and findings suggest that conversational turns support language development through cortical growth in language and social processing regions. This has implications for early interventions to enhance children's language environments to support neurocognitive development.

Replication and extension of a family-based training program to improve cognitive abilities in young children.

Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with persistent academic achievement gaps, which necessitates evidence-based, scalable interventions to improve children's outcomes. The present study reports results from a replication and extension of a family-based training program previously found to improve cognitive development in lower-SES preschoolers (Neville et al., 2013). One hundred and one primarily low-SES families with 107 children aged 4-7 years were randomly assigned to the intervention or passive control group. Intent-to-treat regression models revealed that children whose families were assigned to the intervention group did not exhibit significant benefit on composite measures of nonverbal IQ, executive functioning, or language skills, though post-hoc analyses suggested marginal improvement on the fluid reasoning subcomponent of nonverbal IQ. Treatment-on-treated models revealed a significant positive effect of intervention attendance on fluid reasoning and a negative effect on vocabulary. We discuss potential causes for the non-replication, including differences in the sample composition, size, and assessment choices. Results suggest the need to more broadly assess scalable interventions with varying populations and ensure appropriate cultural and geographical adaptations to achieve maximum benefits for children from diverse backgrounds.

Mindfulness training preserves sustained attention and resting state anticorrelation between default-mode network and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: A randomized controlled trial.

Mindfulness training can enhance cognitive control, but the neural mechanisms underlying such enhancement in children are unknown. Here, we conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with sixth graders (mean age 11.76 years) to examine the impact of 8 weeks of school-based mindfulness training, relative to coding training as an active control, on sustained attention and associated resting-state functional brain connectivity. At baseline, better performance on a sustained-attention task correlated with greater anticorrelation between the default mode network (DMN) and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a key node of the central executive network. Following the interventions, children in the mindfulness group preserved their sustained-attention performance (i.e., fewer lapses of attention) and preserved DMN-DLPFC anticorrelation compared to children in the active control group, who exhibited declines in both sustained attention and DMN-DLPFC anticorrelation. Further, change in sustained-attention performance correlated with change in DMN-DLPFC anticorrelation only within the mindfulness group. These findings provide the first causal link between mindfulness training and both sustained attention and associated neural plasticity. Administered as a part of sixth graders' school schedule, this RCT supports the beneficial effects of school-based mindfulness training on cognitive control.

Mindfulness training reduces stress and amygdala reactivity to fearful faces in middle-school children.

The impact of mindfulness training on stress and associated brain plasticity has been shown in adults, whereas the impact of such training in the developing brain remains unknown. To address this open question, 40 middle-school children were randomized to either mindfulness or coding training (active control) interventions during the school day for eight weeks. Outcome measures were ratings of self-perceived stress and right amygdala activation while viewing fearful, happy, and neutral facial expressions during functional MRI. Prior to intervention, greater stress correlated with greater right amygdala activation in response to fearful versus neutral facial expressions across all children. After intervention, children who received mindfulness training reported lower stress associated with reduced right amygdala activation to fearful faces relative to children in the control condition. Amygdala responses to happy faces were unrelated to either initial stress or mindfulness reduction of stress. Moreover, mindfulness training led to relatively stronger functional connectivity between the right amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex during the viewing of fearful facial expressions. Changes in perceived stress and neuroplasticity occurred in nonmeditative states, indicating that the benefits of mindfulness training generalized beyond the active meditative state. This study provides initial evidence that mindfulness training in children reduces stress and promotes functional brain changes and that such training can be integrated into the school curriculum for entire classes. This study also reveals first evidence that a neurocognitive mechanism for both stress and its reduction by mindfulness training is related specifically to reduced amygdala responses to negative stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Language Exposure Relates to Structural Neural Connectivity in Childhood.

Neuroscience research has elucidated broad relationships between socioeconomic status (SES) and young children's brain structure, but there is little mechanistic knowledge about specific environmental factors that are associated with specific variation in brain structure. One environmental factor, early language exposure, predicts children's linguistic and cognitive skills and later academic achievement, but how language exposure relates to neuroanatomy is unknown. By measuring the real-world language exposure of young children (ages 4-6 years, 27 male/13 female), we confirmed the preregistered hypothesis that greater adult-child conversational experience, independent of SES and the sheer amount of adult speech, is related to stronger, more coherent white matter connectivity in the left arcuate and superior longitudinal fasciculi on average, and specifically near their anterior termination at Broca's area in left inferior frontal cortex. Fractional anisotropy of significant tract subregions mediated the relationship between conversational turns and children's language skills and indicated a neuroanatomical mechanism underlying the SES "language gap." Post hoc whole-brain analyses revealed that language exposure was not related to any other white matter tracts, indicating the specificity of this relationship. Results suggest that the development of dorsal language tracts is environmentally influenced, specifically by early, dialogic interaction. Furthermore, these findings raise the possibility that early intervention programs aiming to ameliorate disadvantages in development due to family SES may focus on increasing children's conversational exposure to capitalize on the early neural plasticity underlying cognitive development.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Over the last decade, cognitive neuroscience has highlighted the detrimental impact of disadvantaged backgrounds on young children's brain structure. However, to intervene effectively, we must know which proximal aspects of the environmental aspects are most strongly related to neural development. The present study finds that young children's real-world language exposure, and specifically the amount of adult-child conversation, correlates with the strength of connectivity in the left hemisphere white matter pathway connecting two canonical language regions, independent of socioeconomic status and the sheer volume of adult speech. These findings suggest that early intervention programs aiming to close the achievement gap may focus on increasing children's conversational exposure to capitalize on the early neural plasticity underlying cognitive development.

Beyond the 30-Million-Word Gap: Children's Conversational Exposure Is Associated With Language-Related Brain Function.

Children's early language exposure impacts their later linguistic skills, cognitive abilities, and academic achievement, and large disparities in language exposure are associated with family socioeconomic status (SES). However, there is little evidence about the neural mechanisms underlying the relation between language experience and linguistic and cognitive development. Here, language experience was measured from home audio recordings of 36 SES-diverse 4- to 6-year-old children. During a story-listening functional MRI task, children who had experienced more conversational turns with adults-independently of SES, IQ, and adult-child utterances alone-exhibited greater left inferior frontal (Broca's area) activation, which significantly explained the relation between children's language exposure and verbal skill. This is the first evidence directly relating children's language environments with neural language processing, specifying both an environmental and a neural mechanism underlying SES disparities in children's language skills. Furthermore, results suggest that conversational experience impacts neural language processing over and above SES or the sheer quantity of words heard.

Functional brain organization of working memory in adolescents varies in relation to family income and academic achievement.

Working memory (WM) capacity reflects executive functions associated with performance on a wide range of cognitive tasks and education outcomes, including mathematics achievement, and is associated with dorsolateral prefrontal and parietal cortices. Here we asked if family income is associated with variation in the functional brain organization of WM capacity among adolescents, and whether that variation is associated with performance on a statewide test of academic achievement in mathematics. Participants were classified into higher-income and lower-income groups based on family income, and performed a WM task with a parametric manipulation of WM load (N-back task) during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Behaviorally, the higher-income group had greater WM capacity and higher mathematics achievement scores. Neurally, the higher-income group showed greater activation as a function of WM load in bilateral prefrontal, parietal, and other regions, although the lower-income group exhibited greater activation at the lowest load. Both groups exhibited positive correlations between parietal activations and mathematics achievement scores, but only the higher-income group exhibited a positive correlation between prefrontal activations and mathematics scores. Most of these findings were maintained when higher- and lower-income groups were matched on WM task performance or nonverbal IQ. Findings indicate that the functional neural architecture of WM varies with family income and is associated with education measures of mathematics achievement.

Sticker Shock: How Information Affects Citizen Support for Public School Funding.

This study examines the role of information in shaping public opinion in the context of support for education spending. While there is broad public support for increasing government funding for public schools, Americans tend to underestimate what is currently spent. We embed a series of experiments in a nationally representative survey administered in 2012 (n = 2,993) to examine whether informing citizens about current levels of education spending alters public opinion about whether funding should increase. Providing information on per-pupil spending in a respondent's local school district reduces the probability that he or she will express support for increasing spending by 22 percentage points on average. Informing respondents about state-average teacher salaries similarly depresses support for salary increases. These effects are larger among respondents who underestimate per-pupil spending and teacher salaries by a greater amount, consistent with the idea that the observed changes in opinion are driven, at least in part, by informational effects, as opposed to priming alone.

Neuroanatomical correlates of the income-achievement gap.

In the United States, the difference in academic achievement between higher- and lower-income students (i.e., the income-achievement gap) is substantial and growing. In the research reported here, we investigated neuroanatomical correlates of this gap in adolescents (N = 58) in whom academic achievement was measured by statewide standardized testing. Cortical gray-matter volume was significantly greater in students from higher-income backgrounds (n = 35) than in students from lower-income backgrounds (n = 23), but cortical white-matter volume and total cortical surface area did not differ significantly between groups. Cortical thickness in all lobes of the brain was greater in students from higher-income than lower-income backgrounds. Greater cortical thickness, particularly in temporal and occipital lobes, was associated with better test performance. These results represent the first evidence that cortical thickness in higher- and lower-income students differs across broad swaths of the brain and that cortical thickness is related to scores on academic-achievement tests.

Cognitive skills, student achievement tests, and schools.

Cognitive skills predict academic performance, so schools that improve academic performance might also improve cognitive skills. To investigate the impact schools have on both academic performance and cognitive skills, we related standardized achievement-test scores to measures of cognitive skills in a large sample (N = 1,367) of eighth-grade students attending traditional, exam, and charter public schools. Test scores and gains in test scores over time correlated with measures of cognitive skills. Despite wide variation in test scores across schools, differences in cognitive skills across schools were negligible after we controlled for fourth-grade test scores. Random offers of enrollment to oversubscribed charter schools resulted in positive impacts of such school attendance on math achievement but had no impact on cognitive skills. These findings suggest that schools that improve standardized achievement-test scores do so primarily through channels other than improving cognitive skills.