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Parents' Perceived Neighborhood Safety and Children's Cognitive Performance: Complexities by Race, Ethnicity, and

Shervin Assari1,2, Shanika Boyce3, Ritesh Mistry4

  • 1Department of Family Medicine, Charles R Drew University of Medicine and Science, Los Angeles, CA 90059, USA.

Urban Science (Basel, Switzerland)
|July 26, 2021
PubMed

Insights

Neighborhood safety impacts children's cognitive development differently across racial and ethnic groups. These findings highlight the need to address neighborhood inequalities to reduce disparities in cognitive performance.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Sociology
  • Public Health

Background:

  • Parental perceptions of neighborhood safety can influence child development.
  • Racial and ethnic disparities exist in neighborhood environments and their associated outcomes.
  • Understanding these variations is crucial for targeted interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how parents' subjective assessment of neighborhood safety affects children's cognitive abilities.
  • To explore racial and ethnic differences in this relationship.
  • To identify potential disparities in cognitive development linked to neighborhood safety.

Main Methods:

  • Cross-sectional analysis of 10,027 children from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study.
  • Examined parents' subjective neighborhood safety as the primary exposure.
  • Assessed three cognitive domains: general cognitive performance, executive functioning, and learning/memory using mixed-effects regression models.

Main Results:

  • Subjective neighborhood safety positively correlated with executive functioning, but not general cognition or memory.
  • The positive effect of neighborhood safety on executive functioning was stronger for non-Hispanic White children compared to Asian American children.
  • Non-White children showed greater gains in general cognitive performance and learning/memory with increased neighborhood safety relative to non-Hispanic White children.

Conclusions:

  • Childhood race/ethnicity significantly moderates the association between perceived neighborhood safety and cognitive performance.
  • Observed patterns vary across different racial/ethnic groups and cognitive domains.
  • Addressing neighborhood inequalities is essential to mitigate racial/ethnic disparities in children's cognitive development.
Abstract

Keywords:
childrencognitioncognitive performanceethnicitypopulation groupsrace

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