Lower socioeconomic status is associated with greater neural responses to deviance in the ambient environment

The early life experience of people varies by socioeconomic status, raising the question of how this difference is reflected in the adult brain. An important aspect of brain function is the ability to focus on a task while maintaining the ability to detect salient changes in the task-irrelevant background. Here we ask whether SES, as measured by perceived social standing, is reflected by the way brain signals, measured with an electroencephalogram, correlate with detecting changes in irrelevant information. We study electrical brain activities in the frontocentral region to a series of auditory tones composed of “standard” (80%) stimuli randomly interspersed by “deviant” (20%) stimuli while subjects were engaged in visual tasks. In study 1, participants focused on a silent documentary movie with captions (N = 16); in study 2, participants (N = 42) focused on image sequences incorporating neutral or negative content. Both studies showed stronger automatic change detection indexed by mismatch negativity (MMN) in lower SES individuals, regardless of sound features, emotional content, or study types. In addition, a larger MMN was observed despite comparable task performance across SES. Our study indicates low SES participants’ higher sensitivity to detect ambient auditory changes.