{"id":85340,"date":"2013-10-29T17:01:05","date_gmt":"2013-10-29T21:01:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=85340"},"modified":"2013-11-06T09:00:33","modified_gmt":"2013-11-06T14:00:33","slug":"the-effect-of-socioeconomic-status-on-how-the-brain-processes-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/10\/the-effect-of-socioeconomic-status-on-how-the-brain-processes-sound\/","title":{"rendered":"The Effect of Socioeconomic Status on How the Brain Processes Sound"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Erika<\/a>
Erika Skoe, assistant professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences, has found that children of parents with low levels of education hear differently than their peers, which could affect their performance in school. (Peter Morenus\/UConn Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A UConn professor and her colleagues at Northwestern University have found that adolescents from families that are low on the socioeconomic ladder process some sounds less accurately than their peers. The finding could have wide-ranging implications for learning, memory and reading comprehension.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf your brain is treating a sound differently every time you hear it, then how will you learn the meaning of that sound? How will you learn to read effectively?\u201d says assistant professor of speech, language and hearing sciences Erika Skoe.<\/p>\n

Skoe and co-authors Nina Kraus, the study\u2019s principal investigator, and Jennifer Krizman, worked with teenagers in three Chicago-area public schools that serve students with low socioeconomic status. The researchers used the teens\u2019 mothers\u2019 self-reported education level, a common proxy for socioeconomic status, to separate the students into two groups: those whose mothers had a high school education or less, and those whose mothers had any post-secondary education.<\/p>\n

Studies have shown that children whose parents have little education hear fewer, simpler words in their homes, have fewer interactive discussions with their family members, and experience more general ambient noise. Skoe wondered if this dearth of what she calls \u201cauditory enrichment\u201d would have an effect on how children\u2019s brains work.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to tap into how one\u2019s experience with sound has wired or rewired the brain,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

If your brain is treating a sound differently every time you hear it, then how will you learn the meaning of that sound? How will you learn to read effectively?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sixty-six students in the two groups listened to auditory stimuli \u2013 single syllables that are easy to understand \u2013 while hooked up to electroencephalography (EEG) equipment. The EEG measured responses from the auditory brainstem, the lowest part of the brain where, Skoe says, responses are automatic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis part of your brain would respond whether you were awake, asleep or even anesthetized,\u201d says Skoe. Getting this response was important in understanding how the most fundamental brain processes are affected by one\u2019s auditory landscape<\/p>\n

The brain waves produced by students in the low-maternal-education group turned out to be \u201cnoisier\u201d than those of their higher-maternal-education peers: their brain signals represented sounds less accurately and were less consistent in their representations of the same sound over time.<\/p>\n

In other words, students from low-maternal-education backgrounds were hearing sounds less accurately and with more variability.<\/p>\n

Skoe says these findings have major implications for how students learn and process information.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf your brain is creating a different signal each time you hear a sound, or if that signal is noisy, you might be losing some of the details of the sound,\u201d she says. These details could make all the difference in the classroom.<\/p>\n

But in some cases, says Skoe, auditory skills are honed in other ways. Studies have shown that being bilingual or playing a musical instrument can give students a leg up. Both are forms of auditory enrichment that may potentially mitigate the effects of socioeconomic status.<\/p>\n

Acoustically enhancing the academic environment, through the use of assistive listening devices in the classroom, is another promising option, says Skoe. In a recent Northwestern study, teachers wore a microphone that piped their voice directly into an in-ear receiver used by dyslexic children in their class. The system helped to overcome background noise and classroom acoustics. After one year of using this system, the children\u2019s brain responses improved.<\/p>\n

\u201cModifying the auditory world for a particular student, even if just for a portion of the day, can improve academic performance and fine-tune how sound is automatically encoded in the brain,\u201d says Skoe.<\/p>\n

The biggest take-home message of her study, she says, is that the power of education can\u2019t be overstated, and it can affect not only the person who is educated, but their children as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a parent\u2019s education level can be improved just a little bit, it could make a big difference in her children\u2019s lives,\u201d she says. Even if educational advancement isn\u2019t an option, Skoe encourages parents to engage in conversations with their children, and she points out that in some communities, parents can also take courses on how to better communicate with their children.<\/p>\n

Skoe, who joined UConn this fall, is especially interested in working with schools in the Connecticut area on similar questions. If scientists can create concrete data showing the origins of learning and reading problems, then she hopes state and national funding can be allocated to help these issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re doing this science to understand what we\u2019ve already been observing in the real world,\u201d says Skoe.<\/p>\n

The study appears online today in the Journal of Neuroscience.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A UConn researcher has found that children of parents with low levels of education hear differently than their peers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":85135,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2076,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[63],"class_list":["post-85340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 00:37:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85340"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85343,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85340\/revisions\/85343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/85135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85340"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=85340"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=85340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}