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How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

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Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#71

Post by roenxi »

PeterisP wrote: post #24
romaaeterna wrote: post #5

fMRI results show that children from lower-SES backgrounds are less stimulated by monetary rewards. "The findings suggest that lower SES circumstances may prompt the brain to adapt to the environment..." Wow! How did they control for the possibility that a heritable reward-focus in the parents leads to the SES results? Or that other factors, such as higher engagement or game-competence, might have led to this result?…

They obviously didn't, and didn't need to - that sentence is not making any assertion, it is suggesting a hypothesis that can be tested in future work by them or others. The sole assertion this study is making is about the existence of the effect, and it is only speculating (and not hiding that it's speculating) about a possible mechanism causing that effect. And obviously further details relating to this observation…

And, indeed, makes for some rather interesting follow up questions...

* Is this genuinely just a different way of processing rewards?

* Do low SES children not understand that money is a reward?

* Is there a capability gap at playing games? Or different responses to games themselves?

I don't think it makes intuitive sense that limited rewards leads to a lower response, so my guess is low SES children probably have a different relationship with money. My observation has been, in a weird but important way, that only a subset of high SES families seem to treat money as a desirable thing. Most people seem to have a what I see as a complex love-hate-contempt relationship with money. There isn't conclusive evidence in the article though.

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#72

Post by zozbot234 »

pessimizer wrote: post #70
Avicebron wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think the issue isn't the research exactly, it's the motivations behind doing the research. Like, if it was determined tomorrow, with a huge article in nature or another journal that's suitably popular/prestigious that intelligence (and rewards for the sake of this thread) is totally inherited or even 80% inherited, what material changes would you want/expect to see in society in relation to that news.

As far as I can tell, the reason why science is continually trying to prove black people inferior (let's not bury the lede) is in order to put the current condition of black people in America as a result of nature and not of hundreds of years of slavery and slave breeding, and of the current condition of black people in Africa to their inferior brains instead of the violent takeovers of their countries, mass enslavem…

The Caribbean has a history of slavery not unlike the U.S., so the fact that Caribbean immigrants are better off is genuinely interesting. Of course, institutional factors are the most likely difference; among other things, the British got rid of slavery a generation or so before the U.S. did, and there was no real equivalent there to the U.S. Civil War and failed Reconstruction. There are also cultural differences that will of course matter, but they're causally downstream of that basic stylized fact.

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#73

Post by concordDance »

nostromo wrote: post #31
romaaeterna wrote: post #5

fMRI results show that children from lower-SES backgrounds are less stimulated by monetary rewards. "The findings suggest that lower SES circumstances may prompt the brain to adapt to the environment..." Wow! How did they control for the possibility that a heritable reward-focus in the parents leads to the SES results? Or that other factors, such as higher engagement or game-competence, might have led to this result?…

Most of an individual's intelligence is inherited from their parents, and that's been proven multiple times with large-scale studies of adopted twins. It wouldn't surprise me if reward response was similar. But it's unlikely we'll make any advancements in our understanding of genes and intelligence or behavior, because this kind of research is out-of-favor and almost impossible to fund now.

> Most of an individual's intelligence is inherited from their parents

Note that heritability numbers are specific to a particular environment. E.g. if you have a more random environment with some kids exposed to lead poisoning, some to malnourishment and some to parasites you will get lower heritability figures.

Most studies on this are conducted in countries like Sweden and the USA on middle class populations.

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#74

Post by concordDance »

mjburgess wrote: post #40
nostromo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of an individual's intelligence is inherited from their parents, and that's been proven multiple times with large-scale studies of adopted twins. It wouldn't surprise me if reward response was similar. But it's unlikely we'll make any advancements in our understanding of genes and intelligence or behavior, because this kind of research is out-of-favor and almost impossible to fund now.

Unfortunately the field of observational statistics called "psychometrics" which has "proved" this using "twin studies" is largely bunk. The premise of those studies is linear additive effects from each causal factor, which is almost certainly false; and in general, there is no way of establishing causation without interventional experiments. If the effects were plausibly non-linear, we would need 1 trillion+ data po…

> The premise of those studies is linear additive effects from each causal factor

I don't understand this. Why would you need linear additive effects to think that if identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins and half siblings are less similar than full siblings along some axis then there is probably a genetic component?

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#75

Post by concordDance »

Avicebron wrote: post #38
nostromo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of an individual's intelligence is inherited from their parents, and that's been proven multiple times with large-scale studies of adopted twins. It wouldn't surprise me if reward response was similar. But it's unlikely we'll make any advancements in our understanding of genes and intelligence or behavior, because this kind of research is out-of-favor and almost impossible to fund now.

Well, I think the issue isn't the research exactly, it's the motivations behind doing the research. Like, if it was determined tomorrow, with a huge article in nature or another journal that's suitably popular/prestigious that intelligence (and rewards for the sake of this thread) is totally inherited or even 80% inherited, what material changes would you want/expect to see in society in relation to that news.

> what material changes would you want/expect to see in society in relation to that news.

Governments offering free embryo selection plausibly.

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#76

Post by sokoloff »

mjburgess wrote: post #66
sokoloff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IQ is a test, it isnt intelligence and isnt even a measure of intelligence. Are you sure about that? If I find someone that we all agree is “pretty damn smart” and they regularly score 115+ and we find someone that we all agree is “not very smart at all” and they regularly score It may be imperfect, and pretty clearly does not have three significant digits of precision, but it seems it’s still a measure of the thin…

Er, sure, if you can define some objective measures of performance that are taken to be symptomatic of intelligence and correlate those with IQ test results -- and then show test-retest validity across a wide population (etc. etc.), then you'd have a case. But all attempts to do this, i'm aware of, show in fact IQ tests don't behave this way. That all correlation with objective measures of performs, with reliable mea…

> So what we, in fact find, is that IQ tests only reliably correlate in the 'mental retardation' region of performance.

Even assuming we agree that that’s the only usefulness of an IQ test, in what way does that make them not a measure of intelligence?

A ruler is still a measure of length even if it can’t measure the size of an atom or the distance to the moon.

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#77

Post by concordDance »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #50
nostromo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you end up with bad science, like (potentially) the study posted here. If you refuse to consider the role of genetics, then everything is going to look like environmental impacts. This has a real impact on policy and investment, because we waste time on money on programs that have no chance of success. Trying to remain ignorant isn't going to help us here, even if we have good intentions.

> because we waste time on money on programs that have no chance of success. And presumably learn from it. While wasting a lot of money and effort (and people) on programs that won't work isn't good, neither is not trying because the effect is presumed, pre hoc, to be small or non-existent. We live in a world where most people aren't enabled to achieve their potential. Figuring out that extrinsic rewards don't work t…

> And presumably learn from it.

While it might be easier than for regular people, it's still extremely hard for a politician/academic or political faction/academic faction to admit error. It's almost always possible to come up with a reason for why something didn't work that doesn't require giving up on a centrally important idea.

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#78

Post by mjburgess »

sokoloff wrote: post #76
mjburgess wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, sure, if you can define some objective measures of performance that are taken to be symptomatic of intelligence and correlate those with IQ test results -- and then show test-retest validity across a wide population (etc. etc.), then you'd have a case. But all attempts to do this, i'm aware of, show in fact IQ tests don't behave this way. That all correlation with objective measures of performs, with reliable mea…

> So what we, in fact find, is that IQ tests only reliably correlate in the 'mental retardation' region of performance. Even assuming we agree that that’s the only usefulness of an IQ test, in what way does that make them not a measure of intelligence? A ruler is still a measure of length even if it can’t measure the size of an atom or the distance to the moon.

It's more like a binary classifier: retarded, not-retarded.

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#79

Post by concordDance »

pessimizer wrote: post #70
Avicebron wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think the issue isn't the research exactly, it's the motivations behind doing the research. Like, if it was determined tomorrow, with a huge article in nature or another journal that's suitably popular/prestigious that intelligence (and rewards for the sake of this thread) is totally inherited or even 80% inherited, what material changes would you want/expect to see in society in relation to that news.

As far as I can tell, the reason why science is continually trying to prove black people inferior (let's not bury the lede) is in order to put the current condition of black people in America as a result of nature and not of hundreds of years of slavery and slave breeding, and of the current condition of black people in Africa to their inferior brains instead of the violent takeovers of their countries, mass enslavem…

[flagged]

Re: How the brain responds to reward is linked to socioeconomic background

#80

Post by anonymouskimmer »

mjburgess wrote: post #66
sokoloff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IQ is a test, it isnt intelligence and isnt even a measure of intelligence. Are you sure about that? If I find someone that we all agree is “pretty damn smart” and they regularly score 115+ and we find someone that we all agree is “not very smart at all” and they regularly score It may be imperfect, and pretty clearly does not have three significant digits of precision, but it seems it’s still a measure of the thin…

Er, sure, if you can define some objective measures of performance that are taken to be symptomatic of intelligence and correlate those with IQ test results -- and then show test-retest validity across a wide population (etc. etc.), then you'd have a case. But all attempts to do this, i'm aware of, show in fact IQ tests don't behave this way. That all correlation with objective measures of performs, with reliable mea…

I don't understand why you're presupposing "performance" as a measure of intelligence, and what you mean by it. No one is saying that intelligence alone (above a threshold) equates to demonstrated, or even potential, life outcomes.
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