Date created: | Last Updated:

Category: Project

Description: Why do adolescents from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds often underperform on tests of learning and academic achievement? These disparities may not only reflect external environmental constraints, like limited educational and financial support, but also internal decision strategies that are shaped by the experience of poverty. It is hypothesized that lower SES reduces exploration and increases exploitation–behaviors that could reduce learning and academic achievement. However, evidence for these relationships is lacking. Here, we tested how SES shapes adolescents’ exploratory decisions on a reward learning task and its relationship to learning and academic achievement (n=124, age range=12-14). We found that lower SES was associated with less exploration and more exploitation. Furthermore, differences in exploratory behavior explained the relationship between lower SES and reduced task performance, lower school grades, and, in a lower-SES subsample, lower academic skills. We also found, through computational modeling, that reduced exploration was driven by higher loss aversion. Moreover, exploratory tendencies fluctuated in response to changing reward outcomes, suggesting leveraging rewards could boost exploration. These findings highlight the importance of considering how SES might shape not only the content of what children learn but also the learning process itself and offer a mechanistic explanation for academic learning and achievement disparities across SES.