A cross sectional analysis of the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and cognitive functioning across Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) cognitive abilities

The current study re-examines the relationship between SES and cognitive functioning using new assumptions, methodological procedures, and empirically-validated theoretical frameworks. One new assumption is that academic achievement is predicated upon both abilities less susceptible to the qualitative influence of formal instruction and learning (i.e., less instructionally malleable abilities) and abilities more susceptible to the qualitative influence of formal instruction and learning a (i.e., more instructionally malleable abilities), and that intelligence tests, as valid predictors of future academic achievement, assess both types of abilities. It is further assumed that the pivotal mediating factor associated with the optimal development of these latter cognitive abilities is SES. The new methodological procedure consists of a cross sectional analysis of the nationally representative standardization sample of the Woodcock Johnson Tests of Cognitive Abilities, Third Edition (WJ III COG). The cognitive ability factors assessed by this instrument represent an exact measurement model of the empirically-validated Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) theoretical framework of cognitive functioning.; The central research questions being asked in this study are whether: (1) increasingly divergent cross-sectional trends exist across SES groups among CHC abilities at the more instructionally fostered end of the continuum (crystallized ability) and (2) more comparable cross-sectional trends exist across SES groups among CHC abilities at the less instructionally fostered end of the continuum (mental processing speed and fluid intelligence).; The findings provided some support for the accumulative detrimental toll of SES on crystallized ability (the most instructionally fostered of all the cognitive abilities); no support for the accumulative detrimental toll of SES among abilities at the less instructionally fostered end of the continuum, as well as the remaining cognitive abilities at the more instructionally fostered end of the continuum; and no support for the insignificant/minimal impact of SES among abilities at the less instructionally fostered end of the continuum. SES appeared to have a constant influential role in the psychometric expression of all the CHC cognitive abilities from the time children entered school until the time they graduated from high school.