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Impact of Home Learning Environments and Nutrition on Executive Function Development: Insight from rural Côte d’Ivoire

Fri, April 9, 10:00 to 11:30am EDT (10:00 to 11:30am EDT), Virtual

Abstract

Impoverished environments, indexed by low socioeconomic status (SES), are negatively associated with children’s cognitive development and academic outcomes (i.e. literacy). The negative association between low SES and literacy is partially mediated by the development of executive functions (EFs), which are vulnerable to environmental effects throughout childhood. Our understanding of how environments impact EF development is limited to the narrow subset of environments that are studied--disportionately environments in high-income countries--and specific mechanisms by which environments impact EFs may not easily generalize to low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs), where households often survive on less $1/day, undernutrition is prevalent, and illiteracy rates are high (e.g. rural Côte d’Ivoire).

We asked how different experiential and biological factors characterize the environmental impact on EF development and literacy in children growing up in rural Côte d’Ivoire with (1) low resource home learning environments (material deprivation, limited/low quality caregiver interaction) and (2) inadequate nutrition to support physical (including brain) development. We test the hypothesis that these experiential (home learning environment) and biological (nutrition) factors have distinct impacts on EF development, which in turn, mediates the relationship between SES and literacy. We compare the relevance of each factor to EF development with the aim of informing interventions that optimally support EFs.

Method. 672 primary-school children (318 girls, mean age=9.42, ages 4-14) from rural Côte d’Ivoire completed height, weight, and mean-upper-arm-circumference (MUAC) measures (converted to z-scores; WHO, 2008), household SES questionnaire (i.e. poverty scorecard), inhibitory control and working memory EF tasks (NIH Cognitive Toolbox adaptation; Tulsky et al., 2014), and reading battery (EGRA; RTI International, 2009). Using SEM, we modeled the relations between SES and the following latent variables: home learning environment (child has help with homework, book, literate parent), physical development (height-for-age, BMI-for-age), EF (working memory, inhibitory control) and literacy (letter, word, pseudoword reading).

Results. Overall, household SES was low; e.g. 24% reported indoor plumbing. Only 28% of children reported owning a book. 20% of children were stunted. Literacy scores were poor overall; most children struggled to read single words (Letter: 27%; Word: 23%; Pseudoword: 16% correct).
Children’s EFs were most strongly predicted by the quality of the learning environment in the home, rather than a child’s physical development. We tested and found no direct relation between SES and literacy, rather the relation between SES and literacy was mediated by EFs. Furthermore, the relation between SES and EFs was mediated by the home learning environment.

Discussion. EFs are supported by brain regions that have a protracted developmental trajectory and a sensitive period in early childhood--and thus are vulnerable to a child’s nutrition (e.g. Black et al., 2019) and early childhood care (e.g. Obradovic et al., 2016). Here we show that the quality of the child’s home environment, rather than nutrition, more robustly predicted EF development, suggesting interventions targeting the home environment may be beneficial. By focusing on the developmental experiences of children in rural Cote d’Ivoire, we broaden our understanding of how multiple components of a child’s environment impact cognition.

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