Exploration is associated with socioeconomic disparities in learning and academic achievement in adolescence

Alexandra L. Decker (), Julia Leonard, Rachel Romeo, Joseph Itiat, Nicholas A. Hubbard, Clemens C. C. Bauer, Hannah Grotzinger, Melissa A. Giebler, Yesi Camacho Torres, Andrea Imhof and John D. E. Gabrieli
Additional contact information
Alexandra L. Decker: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Julia Leonard: Yale University
Rachel Romeo: University of Maryland College Park
Joseph Itiat: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Nicholas A. Hubbard: University of Nebraska
Clemens C. C. Bauer: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hannah Grotzinger: University of California
Melissa A. Giebler: Columbia University
Yesi Camacho Torres: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Andrea Imhof: University of Oregon
John D. E. Gabrieli: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Adolescents from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds often underperform on tests of learning and academic achievement. Existing theories propose that these disparities reflect not only external constraints, like limited resources, but also internal decision strategies that adapt to the early environment and influence learning. These theories predict that adolescents from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds explore less and exploit more, which, in turn, reduces learning and academic achievement. Here, we test this possibility and show that lower socioeconomic status in adolescence is associated with less exploration on a reward learning task (n = 124, 12–14-year-olds from the United States). Computational modeling revealed that reduced exploration was related to higher loss aversion. Reduced exploration also mediated socioeconomic differences in task performance, school grades, and, in a lower-socioeconomic status subsample, academic skills. These findings raise the possibility that learning disparities across socioeconomic status relate not only to external constraints but also to internal decision strategies and provide some mechanistic insight into the academic achievement gap.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-61746-6 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-61746-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-61746-6

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().