Cash Aid to Poor Mothers Increases Brain Activity in Babies, Study Finds
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Re: Cash Aid to Poor Mothers Increases Brain Activity in Babies, Study Finds
#2does anybody know the real cause? money alone could not have caused it.
Re: Cash Aid to Poor Mothers Increases Brain Activity in Babies, Study Finds
#3does anybody know the real cause? money alone could not have caused it.
Freedom from financial stress allows mothers to spend more time bonding with their babies would be the obvious hypothesis. Money definitely gives the poor more freedom to control their own lives.
Re: Cash Aid to Poor Mothers Increases Brain Activity in Babies, Study Finds
#4does anybody know the real cause? money alone could not have caused it.
malnutrition would be an obvious cause.
Re: Cash Aid to Poor Mothers Increases Brain Activity in Babies, Study Finds
#5does anybody know the real cause? money alone could not have caused it.
Money solves or allieviates many, many problems, actually.
Stress, lack of sleep, and poor nutrition among them.
Re: Cash Aid to Poor Mothers Increases Brain Activity in Babies, Study Finds
#6does anybody know the real cause? money alone could not have caused it.
Cash directly causes a lot of benefits to children that could improve cognitive function.
Among them:
- better (or more) food
- more time with parents
- better medical care
- better housing, which would reduce exposure to things like lead
So no, it's not like a baby sits next to a stack of cash and gets healthier, obviously. But it's very easy to understand why richer children are healthier and function better.
Re: Cash Aid to Poor Mothers Increases Brain Activity in Babies, Study Finds
#7Moneybis a proxy to many of the life problems and many of the life skills.
Re: Cash Aid to Poor Mothers Increases Brain Activity in Babies, Study Finds
#8is this official radix?
Re: Cash Aid to Poor Mothers Increases Brain Activity in Babies, Study Finds
#9does anybody know the real cause? money alone could not have caused it.
You've reminded me of the Southpark with Magic Johnson where they discover large amounts of cash is the literal cure for AIDS.
Re: Cash Aid to Poor Mothers Increases Brain Activity in Babies, Study Finds
#10In the supplement what's buried is that there were no effects on measured cognitive development in the overall sample.
Meaning that in the subsample of parents who received cash disbursements and did EEG, they found differences in EEG, but that the outcome of importance -- cognitive performance -- did not differ.
Also, as far as I can tell, the EEG measures did not relate to cognitive performance, which calls into question the validity of the EEG measures as markers of what matters.
So, two things:
Even when you preregister things, you can cherrypick your findings if you're allowed to write it up that way by the editor and reviewers. In some ways this paper is like a window into what might have happened if their results weren't preregistered.
It raises the question of whether or not these neural measures are really of value, as they don't predict the thing of importance.
I'm very in favor of financial assistance to people in poverty (and even those who are more resourced) but this study was poorly done (or at least poorly reported) and does a disservice to those advocating for the importance of social safety nets.