The Effect Of Family Socioeconomic Status On Working Memory Updating Ability Of Adolescents:a Moderated Mediation Model

Family socioeconomic status is an important remote environmental factor affecting adolescents’ cognitive development,which in turn affects adolescents’ academic and social achievement.Previous studies have paid little attention to the role of both proximal and protective factors in the impact of family socioeconomic status on adolescents’ cognitive development.However,to explore the joint effects of the two aspects at the same time is helpful to understand the mechanism of the impact of family socioeconomic status on adolescents’ cognitive ability from multiple perspectives.It has implications for how to reduce the negative impact of low socioeconomic status on adolescents’ cognitive development and adolescent s’ cognitive plasticity in the future.In Study 1,we investigated 260(12-15 years old)adolescents with different family socioeconomic status by using the family socioeconomic status scale,parental education involvement scale and active memory task.The results showed that after controlling for individual differences in intelligence level,family socioeconomic status significantly and positively predicted adolescents’ working memory updating ability;maternal education involvement partially mediated the relationship between family socioeconomic status and adolescent working memory updating ability.In Study 2,204 adolescents(12-15 years old)from high and low family socioeconomic status were screened out through the family socioeconomic status scale,then subjects in each group were randomly assigned to the self-affirmation priming condition or the control condition.The parental education involvement scale and activity memory task were used to explore the moderating effect of self-affirmation in the mediation model.The results showed that after controlling for individual differences in intelligence level,self-affirmation moderated the second half of the mediation model.These results suggest that family socioeconomic status is a distal factor affecting adolescents’ working memory updating ability,while maternal education involvement is a proximal factor affecting adolescents’ working memory updating ability.Self-affirmation priming can help reduce the negative impact of low family socioeconomic status on adolescents’ working memory updating ability through maternal educational involvement.