Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We used a population-level connectionist model ofcognitive development to unify a range of empiricalfindings on the influence of socioeconomic status (SES) onbehavior and brain development. The model capturedqualitative patterns of development in behavior and brainstructure, including reductions in connectivity acrossdevelopment (gray matter, cortical thickness) as behavioralaccuracy increases. Individual differences in SES wereimplemented by altering the level of stimulation available inthe environment. At the brain level, the model simulatednon-linear effects of SES on cortical surface area (Noble etal., 2015), and faster cortical thinning across development inchildren from lower SES backgrounds (Piccolo et al., 2016).At the behavioral level, the model simulated the effect ofSES on IQ, whereby gaps are observed to widen acrossdevelopment (von Stumm & Plomin, 2015). The model’smain shortcoming was insufficient growth in connectionmagnitude across development in lower SES groups,implying that some aspects of the growth of connectionstrengths may be maturational (e.g., myelination) rather thanexperience dependent.