Posted on 12/06/2008 6:46:25 PM PST by fightinJAG
ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2008) — University of California, Berkeley, researchers have shown for the first time that the brains of low-income children function differently from the brains of high-income kids.
In a study recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, scientists at UC Berkeley's Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the School of Public Health report that normal 9- and 10-year-olds differing only in socioeconomic status have detectable differences in the response of their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is critical for problem solving and creativity.
Brain function was measured by means of an electroencephalograph (EEG) – basically, a cap fitted with electrodes to measure electrical activity in the brain – like that used to assess epilepsy, sleep disorders and brain tumors.
"Kids from lower socioeconomic levels show brain physiology patterns similar to someone who actually had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult," said Robert Knight, director of the institute and a UC Berkeley professor of psychology. "We found that kids are more likely to have a low response if they have low socioeconomic status, though not everyone who is poor has low frontal lobe response."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Poor children:
Government school;
Little contact with parents;
Lots of television;
no reading.
Rich children:
Private school;
More contact with parents;
less television;
reading.
Poor children:
Government school;
Little contact with parents;
Lots of television;
no reading.
Rich children:
Private school;
More contact with parents;
less television;
reading.
Poor children:
Government school;
Little contact with parents;
Lots of television;
no reading.
Rich children:
Private school;
More contact with parents;
less television;
reading.
“Does the article account for the fact that perhaps some of the low-income kids have these prefrontal abnormalities because of their mom’s substance abuse during pregnancy?”
Now, now. You’re not supposed to go there. That would destroy their point - it’s all about LACK of money that they are this way.
I suspect it is to aid the old class warfare with violin strings using kids.
I remember that story. She was home-schooled. Then, car-schooled.
Which shows that car-schooling is STILL better than government schooling.
I thought it was FLK with GLM (Good-Looking Mom)
This smells like junk science to me.
“That depends if you have some marketable skill or not.”
A friend told me the other day that 5 year employes of Costco gets 20 an hour...
I wonder how much of the problem has to do with not having their father around.
I’d venture to say it has plenty to do with it.
There is no way that they differ only in socioeconomic status. I'm sure that they differ in many other ways. But let's start with why they are in that particular socioeconomic status. Could it be that their parents are not too bright? Both DNA and environment have entered into the picture. The actual explanation is likely to be much more complicated than portrayed here.
"This is a wake-up call," Knight said. "It's not just that these kids are poor and more likely to have health problems, but they might actually not be getting full brain development from the stressful and relatively impoverished environment associated with low socioeconomic status: fewer books, less reading, fewer games, fewer visits to museums."
Do they really think that man in his natural state = books, games, and museums? The natural state of man is grubbing for food and running from predators. It's civilization that has enabled some of us to move to this next level of books, games, and museums.
Although I can tell you, as a teacher, even the poorest kids have plenty of games. They're all electronic, but they all seem to have them. And they play with them incessantly.
Sounds pretty good for an unskilled worker. But, like I said, too many poor people don’t have the vision to start work at a place for $10/hr and work steadily for several years to get to that $20/hr level. And too many absolutely WILL NOT leave the podunk little towns with no jobs to make that kind of money. My home town is one of those podunk towns. Three of my four brothers still live there and have no jobs.
Of course it's much more PC to claim that poverty causes low IQ rather than acknowledge that the reverse is true.
John / Billybob
My husband grew up dirt poor... he’s one of the most brilliant people I know.
I generally agree with your statements with one partial exception. This regards the "contact with parents" element of your assertions.
My own observation, along with some research that I have read suggests something a little different. Poor kids may actually have quite a lot of contact with their parents while rich kids may actually not since their parents often lead extraordinarily busy lives.
My observation is this: many (certainly not all) poor kids seem to experience very little in the way of complex verbal interactions with parents and other adults. Many poor parents simply don't talk to their kids all that much, and when they do, it's in the nature of ordering the kids to quit doing something the parent finds irritating. I have observed this behavior again and again, most often in stores and malls, and I have read research that describes it as well.
Rich parents may or may not spend a lot of time with their kids, but when they do, they generally engage their kids in back-and-forth conversation and speak in complex sentences. Poor kids generally enter school with much smaller vocabularies than rich kids do, and that has been documented. Now, obviously, this is a statistical truth, not a universal truth. Obviously there are exceptions.
It’s nothing more or less than elitism, which is aryanism in another garb, but still human grading, one class deciding what fitness for suitable human existence is. Social darwinism.
You probably don’t agree, b/c you’re a teacher.
These kids are probably getting no mental stimulation at all, I’d bet that the majority of their parents yell at their kids instead of sitting down and talking to them or reading to them.
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