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Relationship between socioeconomic factors and intelligence of preschoolers: A cohort study in the Serbian context

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Abstract

The aim of the current research is to analyse the relationship between the socioeconomic status (SES) of parents and intellectual abilities (IQ) of preschool children of Serbian territory, and in particular how SES factors relate to preschool children’s IQ measured with Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices (CPM), in the different age groups. The research included 430 parents and 430 preschool children. A confirmatory factor analysis of the SES questionnaire revealed five factors: educational and professional status of father and mother, residential and educational status of the family, sport status of parents and comfort of family housing. No gender differences in IQ levels were found in children. Multiple linear regression at four age groups showed that the educational status of the parents and residential and educational status of the family was positively correlated with the IQ at the older groups of preschool children. Two groups of children with the lowest and highest Raven’s CPM scores (1st and 4th quartiles) were used in the Logistic Regression, which determined the significant predictive value of SES factor in children with low Raven’s CPM scores. The results of the current research are in line with other studies on the topic, emphasizing the critical role of social environment for cognitive abilities of children.

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Notes

  1. For example, neurophysiological studies emphasized that SES influences neural development through different environmental aspects, for instance, prenatal factors, parental care and cognitive stimulations, nutrition, drug and alcohol abuse and many others.

  2. There could be an interaction between the factors of the child’s environment and genetic inheritance from their parents that is most commonly represented as linear, although researchers are aware of potential existence of nonlinear effects, moderator effect and the effects of SES that are not straightforward as it was previously thought.

  3. In accordance with the legislation of the Republic of Serbia, preschool age is 3 to 7 years of age and is usually divided into younger children from 3 to 4 years, middle aged from 4 to 5 years and older from 5 to 6 until the child has left school. In this paper, the expression “preschool age” refers to the children of the oldest preschool population: children from 5 to 7 years old.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Sport and Physical Education, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia

    Ivana Milovanović

  2. Department of Psychology, Educational Sciences and Human Movement, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy

    Ambra Gentile

  3. Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia

    Milica Popović-Stijačić

  4. Faculty of Sport and Physical Education, University of Novi Sad, Novi Sad, Serbia

    Željko Krneta

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  1. Ivana Milovanović
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  2. Ambra Gentile
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  3. Milica Popović-Stijačić
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  4. Željko Krneta
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Željko Krneta and Ivana Milovanović. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Ivana Milovanović, Milica Popović-Stijačić and Ambra Gentile, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Željko Krneta.

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Milovanović, I., Gentile, A., Popović-Stijačić, M. et al. Relationship between socioeconomic factors and intelligence of preschoolers: A cohort study in the Serbian context. Curr Psychol 41, 2615–2623 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-020-00781-6

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