Abstract
Household income predicts early adolescents’ cognitive development. However, the mechanism underlying this association and protective factors are unclear. This study assessed one-year longitudinal data to examine whether perceived discrimination mediated the association between household income and executive function and the moderating role of shift-and-persist. 344 early adolescents in rural China were included in the study (mean = 10.88 years, SD = 1.32 years, girls: 51.74%). The latent variable model revealed that household income predicted early adolescents’ cognitive flexibility and working memory in the subsequent year through perceived discrimination. Shift-and-persist moderated the negative effects of perceived discrimination on cognitive flexibility: perceived discrimination impeded cognitive flexibility only among early adolescents with low shift-and-persist. The findings highlight perceived discrimination in the relation between household income and early adolescents’ executive function and underscore the protective role of shift-and-persist.
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Notes
The county to conduct the experiment was a Chinese original impoverished county. Since China eliminated absolute poverty in 2020, the county was no longer an impoverished county registered in the state system in 2021 when the second measurement was taken. However, the county was still in a state of relative poverty. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China (2021), the personal per capita disposable income was 35,128 CNY in 2021, while the per capita disposable income of residents in the county was only 19,614 CNY, approximately only 56% of the national level.
The current study investigated early adolescents living in an original impoverished county in China. Although some of the families were neither poor nor minimal-assurance households registered in the state system, these adolescents’ families still experienced relative poverty, as the information in the state system represented only a state of absolute poverty, but not relative poverty. For more details, see Table 2 in the Appendix.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank for the adolescents and families who participated in this study and the school and research assistants who facilitated the data collection.
Funding
The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant No. 32071071) and the Ministry of Education Humanities and Social Science Research Project (grant No. 18YJA190003).
Data Sharing and DeclarationThe datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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J.Z. conceived of the study, performed the statistical analysis, participated in the research design, data curation, and interpretation of the data results, and drafted the manuscript; K.M. participated in data curation, and the interpretation of the data results, and commented on the manuscript; Y.D. participated in the interpretation of the data results, and commented on the manuscript; Y.R. participated in the interpretation of the data results, and commented on the manuscript; S.H. acquired the research funding, administrated and supervised the project, participated in the interpretation of the data, reviewed and edited the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Zhang, J., Mei, K., Deng, Y. et al. Household Income and Early Adolescents’ Executive Function: The Different Roles of Perceived Discrimination and Shift-and-Persist. J. Youth Adolescence 52, 2636–2646 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-023-01851-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-023-01851-1