Posted on 04/18/2015 2:50:13 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Social scientists have found that by the time children enter kindergarten, there is already a large academic achievement gap between students from wealthy and poor families. We still don't know exactly why that's the case. There's a sense that it at least partly has to do with the fact that affluent mothers and fathers have more intensive parenting sytles—they're more likely to read to their kids, for instance—and have enough money to make sure their toddlers grow up well-nourished, generally cared for, and intellectually stimulated. At the same time, poor children often grow up in chaotic, food-insecure, stressful homes that aren't conducive to a developing mind.
A new study in the journal Nature Neuroscience adds an interesting biological twist to this issue. Using MRI scans of more than 1,000 subjects between the ages of 3 and 20, it finds that children with poor parents tend to have somewhat smaller brains, on some dimensions, than those grow up affluent. Specifically, low-income participants had less surface area on their cerebral cortexes—the gray matter responsible for skills such as language, problem solving, and other higher-order functions we generally just think of as human intelligence. Poorer indviduals in the study also fared worse on a battery of cognitive tests, and a statistical analysis suggested the disparities were related to brain dimensions.
How big a difference are we talking about? According to the researchers, children whose parents earned less than $25,000 per year had 6 percent less surface area on their cortex than those whose parents earned at least $150,000.......
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
IMHO this all a gigantic crock. The size of one’s brain, just like the size of one’s genitals, is predetermined by genetics; the luck of the draw.
Money has nothing to do with it; which is what prompted Melinda Gates’ remark on she and Bill’s wedding night: “Now I understand why they called it MicroSoft.”
The Bell Curve is one of the most astonishingly prescient books ever written. Its basic point was simply that our society is moving towards one in which there is little economic or social demand for low-IQ people.
Every single trend it described 2 years ago has continued and accelerated. And absolutely nobody wants to talk about them, because they don’t fit into neat categories of today’s political thought.
Sadly, the authors were intellectually honest enough to include a chapter on racial differences in IQ. Not at all the focus of their book, but it of course became the focus of 99%+ of the discussion about the book.
Which is of course why it’s now “discredited.”
That quote says no such thing.
It says if A is correlated with B, and B is correlated with C, then C can be expected to be correlated with A.
It says nothing at all about why A is correlated with C.
It is also fascinating that the author blows the "irresponsible scientific commentary" whistle but feels no need whatsoever to explain why what Murray said is either unscientific or irresponsible.
Where have you been? Everyone knows that the size of your genitals is predicted by the size of your feet.
Poor nutrition?
It tells us that the USDA has been spiking the WIC cheese with brain shrinking drugs
Same stuff they give cows to keep cows from evolving into chickens /s
It is a plot to keep the poo peoples down. Moooshell will fix if wit her chillin fooh pwogwam fwom the hood.
The study had the answer before it started. And it's ridiculous. But I'll bet they made some big bucks.
Damn right! I was from a very poor family, but my parents let me know that I had damn sure better be at the top of the class. They read to me, helped me with my homework, and--of utmost importance--made it clear that I was EXPECTED to be at the top!
In the second grade, there were three reading groups: the blue birds, the green birds, and the red birds. I figured them out: the blue birds were the best readers, the red birds the worst. I was in the green birds. I knew I'd better get myself in the blue birds! I did. My first day as a blue bird, the teacher told me to read "to the end of the next paragraph". I had no idea what a paragraph was--but I figured it out fast, and she never knew. I made sure I was one of the top readers! I knew I'd better!
When I took an I.Q. test as a teenager, I scored off the board--way up in the stratospheric genius level.
What you say is absolutely right, CW; however, parents like you and me will always take good care of their children, and, for that reason, their children will always have advantages.
Rap music = OXYMORON.........
Cowboy Bob's corollary to Thatcher's Law:
"The problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people's money."
“It tells us that poor nutrition and lack of stimulation lead to smaller brains.”
Actually, this study does not tell us that: your statement is but one possible explanation for the brain size data, as is the possibility that less intelligent small-brained people mate with less intelligent small-brained people, have small-brained children who are also less intelligent and who consequently earn less money.
This is an observational study and cannot show causation.
Also, since it is not controlled for nutritional patterns, educational level of parents, access to cultural enrichment, access to education, 1 or 2 parent homes, and many other variables, one cannot make many conclusions beyond an unexplained (by this study) association of small brains and low incomes.
The authors of the original article rightly say that further research needs to be done to clarify these questions, but such research is extremely hard to do well.
Personally, I believe that both explanations have merit, and probably, both are operational.
By way of example, I grew up in a lower middle class family in the Bronx, NY in the 1950’s. My father was a fireman, my mother a homemaker. Neither went beyond high school. All 4 of their children completed through graduate level of university and are quite successful. However, as kids, my low-salary father made sure that we went to museums, concerts, did our homework and ate as well as possible on his salary. I should say that although lacking in formal education, my parents both spoke three languages, my mother was a trained musician, and my father was extremely well-read. I doubt that even in view of their low income, that they had small brains.
Fast forward to the late 1990’s: a friend taught at a neighborhood parochial school in my old Bronx neighborhood, now somewhat lower in socioeconomic terms. He soon found out that although only a short subway ride away, none of his 5th graders had ever been to Manhattan to experience the cultural enrichment of the city, much of which is free. To his shock, these kids had no aspirations of anything outside their lives in one of the “Outer Boroughs.”
He became the first person to open their eyes to the possibilities by taking them on a field trip!
So, as you say, lack of stimulation and nutrition may indeed be part of the problem, but being the child of two less intelligent people cannot be an advantage in development of financial success.
This is a terrible time for me to be finding this out--after all those years of hard work, careful planning, and delayed gratification!
Why didn't somebody tell me this years ago? I could have just coasted through life with instant gratification into all this wealth and happiness!
PHOOEY!
For many decades leftists pushed the blank-slate theory of intelligence. That is the "theory" of intelligence that has been totally discredited. Intelligence is not all nature, but it is a very large part of it.
That most people are smart or dumb due to heritable IQ is something libs are just not ready to admit. To admit that would mean ideological defeat and the end of all useless lib programs designed to equalize outcomes and waste tax-payer money.
The Bell Curve is one of the most astonishingly prescient books ever written. Its basic point was simply that our society is moving towards one in which there is little economic or social demand for low-IQ people.
One has to ask: what is this a formula for?
Does that indicate, if the rumor I cited is true, that Bill Gates must have tiny little feet?
(Snicker-snort!).
It seems to me that intelligence is much like height.
Every child is born with the genetic potential to grow to a maximum height or IQ.
We know perfectly well how to change the environment to keep the child from reaching that maximum potential, but we have no clue how to help a child born with low height or IQ genes to grow past that point.
Which makes all the talk about “equality” more than a little creepy. The only way we presently know how to achieve it is to stunt the high achievers.
It is not a formula for increasing the average intelligence of our society.
Exactly.
In a stratified society in which entry into the market is tightly controlled this all tends to concentrate the brains and, of course, the power at the top and to keep the lower classes stupid. In a totally free market society the circulation keeps the intelligence much more evenly distributed as the rich progeny who have not the entrepreneurial spirit lose the wealth of their parents and sparks among the less affluent flash to the top.
If you know that nobody can or will make you happy but you yourself, you learn to think, and this happens at an early age.
If you think your misfortunes are always somebody else's fault and that it's someone else's responsibility to make you happy and successful (which is Leftist dogma), your brain will never be stimulated, you'll never succeed, and you'll wind up, resentful, unhappy, angry, miserable--and poor.
Two of the smartest things I ever learned, I learned at a very early age; viz. to say:
"It's my own damn fault" and"Nobody else can or will do it for me."
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