Elementary school students listen to a lesson while one child reads

A study from MIT finds that students from a lower socioeconomic status have a greater chance of reading difficulties than those from a higher socioeconomic background.

A study conducted by MIT neuroscientists looked at the brain scans of more than 150 children as they performed different reading tasks. The results indicated that when students of higher socioeconomic backgrounds faced difficulties with the tasks, it could often be explained by differences in their ability to put sounds together into words, also known as phonological processing, while problems with the tasks for those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds could often be explained by their ability to quickly name words or letters. The differences in the results suggest that it may be necessary to provide different types of interventions depending on SES to best help children from all backgrounds succeed.

 

READ MORE ABOUT THE STUDY HERE.