When the poor excel: Poverty facilitates procedural learning
Abstract
Recent research has shown that poverty directly impeded cognitive functions because the poor could be easily distracted by monetary concerns. We argue that this effect may be limited to functions relying on working memory. For functions that rely on proceduralized processes however, monetary concerns elicited by reminding of financial demands would be conducive rather than harmful. Our results supported this hypothesis by showing that participants with lower income reached the learning criterion of the information‐integration categorization task faster than their more affluent counterparts after reminding of financial demands.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Poverty-induced thoughts improve procedural-based cognitive functions.
“These findings suggest that poverty-induced thoughts improve procedural-based cognitive functions.”
From Poverty and economic decision making: a review of scarcity theory (2022) · cites this paper as Dang et al. (2016)
Dang et al. (2016) found that lower-income participants performed better than their more affluent counterparts on an information-integration categorization task after being induced with financial concerns.
“Dang et al. (2016) found that lower-income participants performed better than their more affluent counterparts on an information-integration categorization task after being induced with financial concerns.”
From Poverty and economic decision making: a review of scarcity theory (2022) · cites this paper as Dang et al. (2016)
Cites
Poverty impedes cognitive function.
Mani, A., Mullainathan, S., Shafir, E., & Zhao, J. (2013) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1238041 · Cited by 2,967 · see citing works
Kane, M. J., & Engle, R. W. (2003) · Journal of Experimental Psychology: General · doi:10.1037/0096-3445.132.1.47 · Cited by 1,725 · see citing works
On the fragility of skilled performance: What governs choking under pressure?
Beilock, S. L., & Carr, T. H. (2001) · Journal of Experimental Psychology: General · doi:10.1037/0096-3445.130.4.701 · Cited by 1,201 · see citing works
Comment on “Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function”
Wicherts, J. M., & Scholten, A. Z. (2013) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1246680 · Cited by 38 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Poverty and economic decision making: a review of scarcity theory
de Bruijn, E.-J., & Antonides, G. (2022) · Theory and Decision · doi:10.1007/s11238-021-09802-7 · Cited by 277 · see citing works
- Authors
- Dang, J., Xiao, S., Zhang, T., Liu, Y., Jiang, B., & Mao, L.
- Affiliations
- Lund University (SE)
- Stockholm University (SE)
- Peking University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Mao, Lihua
- Venue
- Scandinavian Journal of Psychology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2016-05-06
- Volume
- 57
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 288-291
- ISSN
- 0036-5564 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9450
- OpenAlex
- W2346538205
- Cited by
- 30
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 3
- FWCI
- 2.02
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Scandinavian Journal of Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Lund University Publications (Lund University) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Basic Research Program of China (2015CB351800)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Abilities and Testing
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Business and International Management › Innovation and Socioeconomic Development
- Keywords
- poverty, procedural learning, financial concerns, income, working memory, cognitive function
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Choice Behavior, Female, Humans, Learning, Male, Memory, Short-Term, Poverty, Socioeconomic Factors, Young Adult
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
