Perry, Roisin Carlotta; (2024) Social inequalities in executive function development and attainment during adolescence: An examination of longitudinal relations in the Study of Cognition, Adolescents and Mobile Phones. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

By the end of primary school, the poorest pupils in the UK are around a year behind their peers in terms of educational attainment. This gap doubles by the age of 16. Socioeconomic gradients in executive function skills are also widely reported. However, no studies have explored whether gaps in executive function skills widen during adolescence and, if they do, whether these are associated with (and are therefore a potential cause of) the widening socioeconomic gradient in attainment. This thesis presents the results of a series of analyses of longitudinal data from the demographically representative Study of Cognition, Adolescents and Mobile Phones (SCAMP; n = 2,726) linked with data from the UK Department for Education’s National Pupil Database. In a first study, I show that social inequalities in working memory skills (but not cognitive flexibility or inhibition) show small but significant increases between 12-14 years of age. Unpacking the correlated measures used to index socioeconomic status, parental occupation and Free School Meals status, but not neighbourhood deprivation or parental education, predicted widening gaps in executive function over adolescence. The second study demonstrated that the widening socioeconomic status gradient in attainment over adolescence was significantly predicted by widening gaps in working memory skills. Change in verbal working memory span between 12-14 years partly mediated socioeconomic gradients across the core subjects, but the development of visuospatial working memory skills only partly mediated socioeconomic gradients in maths and science. These results challenge the idea that executive function skills are only relevant for attainment during primary education and provide an important starting point for understanding different ways in which socioeconomic status might impact on attainment during adolescence.

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