Poverty may be more critical to cognitive function than trauma in adolescent refugees

For approximately a decade, research has examined whether trauma or poverty is the most powerful influence on children's cognitive abilities. To address this question, a new study compared adolescents in Jordan—refugees and nonrefugees—to determine what kinds of experiences affected their executive function (the higher-order cognitive skills needed for thinking abstractly, making decisions, and carrying out complex plans). The study concluded that poverty worsened refugee youth's working memory.