Early-life Family Socioeconomic and Educational Impacts on Adult EEG and Behavioral Signatures of Visual Cognitive Function

Socioeconomic and educational factors are known to influence cognitive development, but the specific neural mechanisms through which early-life conditions shape adult brain function remain unclear. In this study, we investigated how early-life socioeconomic and educational environments relate to behavioral performance and neural activity in early adulthood during two visual cognitive tasks, i.e., the flanker task and the visual search task. 73 participants completed the tasks while electroencephalography (EEG) data were recorded. We extracted time-domain event-related potentials (P1, P2, N2, P3) and time-frequency features (alpha, beta, and gamma band power) to assess attention, cognitive control, and perceptual processing. Four SES-related variables, subjective family SES, household income, participants’ own education duration, and parental education, were analyzed. Behavioral results showed that individuals from more advantaged early-life backgrounds exhibited faster and more accurate task performance. Neural data further revealed that enhanced ERP amplitudes and oscillatory activity were associated with higher SES and educational levels. Finally, canonical correlation analysis (CCA) quantified the relative influence of each SES factor, identifying household income and subjective SES as most strongly associated with the integrated brain–behavior profile. These findings provide converging behavioral and neurophysiological evidence that early-life socioeconomic context leaves measurable imprints on cognitive and neural function in adulthood, offering biological insight into how social experience becomes embedded in the brain.