Inhibitory control within the context of early life poverty and implications for outcomes

Early life poverty confers risk for unfavorable outcomes including lower academic achievement, behavioral difficulties, and neurodevelopmental disorders. Disruptions in inhibitory control (IC) have been posed as one mechanism to explain the relationship between early life poverty and deleterious outcomes. There is robust research to suggest that early life poverty is associated with development of poorer IC. Further, poorer IC in children is related to decreased academic achievement and social competence, and increased externalizing and internalizing behavior. There is some parent-report evidence to suggest that IC is a mediator of the relationship between poverty and externalizing behaviors, as well as some limited evidence to suggest that IC is a mediator between poverty and academic achievement. Future work should aim to determine whether early life poverty's relation to IC could be explained by verbal ability which is thought to be central to the development of effective IC. In addition, future neuroimaging work should utilize IC fMRI tasks to identify key neural mechanisms that might contribute to a relationship between early life poverty and IC.