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Poverty, not trauma, affects cognitive function in refugee youth: study (2019)

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Re: Poverty, not trauma, affects cognitive function in refugee youth: study (2019)

#11

Post by derriz »

JordanFarmer wrote: post #7

Oh great, another study. Thinking for 2 minutes... The same applies to non-refugee people living in poverty. This study shows absolutely nothing new (not already known). And does not state a few things that would make it appear foolish. 1. The impoverished are usually the ones who end up as refugees in the first place. 2. Poverty is highly generational. 3. The impoverished are generally lower IQ/cognitive/resourceful…

Why would you bother to even write such comment?

You didn't even read the first line of the article did you?

It is about refugees from the Syrian war and the effects of war trauma on civilians.

The rest of your claims are just silly - there are plenty of smart people who are born in very poor countries and end up poor as a result.

Re: Poverty, not trauma, affects cognitive function in refugee youth: study (2019)

#12

Post by johnnyAghands »

I hope data like this can help society in ridding this disease -- poverty is a disease. Looking at the results and anecdotal evidence it feels like this is obvious.. but the fact of the matter is unless you've been through it, it's very unlikely you can truly appreciate the magnitude of the results.

I hope studies like these and the changing demographics of power (with respect to age and race) will start focusing on this complicated problem.

What still seems unknown to me is what specific environmental traits of "poverty" have the strongest negative impact? I mean, we've all heard of "rags to riches" stories --- how do they differ?

Re: Poverty, not trauma, affects cognitive function in refugee youth: study (2019)

#13

Post by downerending »

JordanFarmer wrote: post #7

Oh great, another study. Thinking for 2 minutes... The same applies to non-refugee people living in poverty. This study shows absolutely nothing new (not already known). And does not state a few things that would make it appear foolish. 1. The impoverished are usually the ones who end up as refugees in the first place. 2. Poverty is highly generational. 3. The impoverished are generally lower IQ/cognitive/resourceful…

> Oh great, another study.

Have to admit, that did make me laugh.

Re: Poverty, not trauma, affects cognitive function in refugee youth: study (2019)

#14

Post by downerending »

SkyBelow wrote: post #5

Paper: https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdev.1... If I'm reading the results table in the linked paper correctly, it seems that household wealth was only a significant predictor of working memory in the combined group and the refugee group but not in the non-refugee group, indicating a possible interaction that it is trauma that increases the susceptibility to poverty. Also, one of the strongest…

Is there other research indicating that males have better working memory than females?

Re: Poverty, not trauma, affects cognitive function in refugee youth: study (2019)

#15

Post by xyzzyz »

SkyBelow wrote: post #5

Paper: https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdev.1... If I'm reading the results table in the linked paper correctly, it seems that household wealth was only a significant predictor of working memory in the combined group and the refugee group but not in the non-refugee group, indicating a possible interaction that it is trauma that increases the susceptibility to poverty. Also, one of the strongest…

Also, one of the strongest predictions of working memory in all groups was gender, which may be an indicator that confounding factors haven't been broken down.

Only if you erroneously assume that the sex cannot be predictive of differences in working memory. We know it's not the case: there are sex differences in average scores in subtests (or in group factors). However, most results point in the direction of female advantage in short term memory. Jensen's 1998 book for example quotes Cohen's d between -0.2 and -0.3, favoring females.

Re: Poverty, not trauma, affects cognitive function in refugee youth: study (2019)

#16

Post by SkyBelow »

downerending wrote: post #14
SkyBelow wrote: post #5

Paper: https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdev.1... If I'm reading the results table in the linked paper correctly, it seems that household wealth was only a significant predictor of working memory in the combined group and the refugee group but not in the non-refugee group, indicating a possible interaction that it is trauma that increases the susceptibility to poverty. Also, one of the strongest…

Is there other research indicating that males have better working memory than females?

I can't speak to specifically working memory, but there is a wide variety of research on sexual dimorphism in humans, including in cognitive function. I know there was some research showing males having better spatial memory than females.

But all of this is caught up in a large nature vs nurture (vs both) question. Is it genetics that cause this? Is it the environment (social pressure/influence) that causes this? Is it a combination of genetics and environment that causes this?

The same sort of complexity would exist in any real life test like this, because this isn't a laboratory where you can make sure everything but a single independent variable is the same, modify that independent variable, and then measure the influence on the dependent variable.

Re: Poverty, not trauma, affects cognitive function in refugee youth: study (2019)

#17

Post by l33tbro »

ngold wrote: post #4

Imagine being so poor you can't concentrate on what tomorrow is. That is what being poor does to you. It robs you of thinking.

Neglect is a truly wretched cycle. When a child's parents cannot afford and value things like basic dietary nutrition and care, it creates cerebral abnormalities [1] due to lack of neuro-cognitive development.

It's then up to half-hearted social/governmental intervention to prevent it from becoming the same for the child's eventual offspring - a hail Mary that rarely lands with some individuals getting on a better path.

[1] https://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/newsletter/2012/07...

Re: Poverty, not trauma, affects cognitive function in refugee youth: study (2019)

#18

Post by nradov »

johnnyAghands wrote: post #12

I hope data like this can help society in ridding this disease -- poverty is a disease. Looking at the results and anecdotal evidence it feels like this is obvious.. but the fact of the matter is unless you've been through it, it's very unlikely you can truly appreciate the magnitude of the results. I hope studies like these and the changing demographics of power (with respect to age and race) will start focusing on…

Eliminating extreme poverty would be nice, but unfortunately overreactions to COVID-19 in some countries are currently driving the world economy into a depression and increasing poverty. While the pandemic is clearly a terrible public health crisis, poverty also kills people. It just takes longer than the virus. Expect to see higher rates of suicide, substance abuse, and chronic disease in the next few years.

Re: Poverty, not trauma, affects cognitive function in refugee youth: study (2019)

#19

Post by twomoretime »

>This research was funded by Elrha’s Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (R2HC) Programme (https://www.elrha.org/project/yale-psychosocial-call2/), which aims to improve health outcomes by strengthening the evidence base for public health interventions in humanitarian crises

I know that the intentions appear to be benevolent but I'd just point out that this isn't really an unbiased source, so it may be prudent to take their results with a grain.

Re: Poverty, not trauma, affects cognitive function in refugee youth: study (2019)

#20

Post by bobisbob »

JordanFarmer wrote: post #7

Oh great, another study. Thinking for 2 minutes... The same applies to non-refugee people living in poverty. This study shows absolutely nothing new (not already known). And does not state a few things that would make it appear foolish. 1. The impoverished are usually the ones who end up as refugees in the first place. 2. Poverty is highly generational. 3. The impoverished are generally lower IQ/cognitive/resourceful…

This is an example of condescension and holding contradictory beliefs.

This person implies that this study is a replication of “known” things and that replications like this are not useful. But the replication strengthens the claims of 1, 2, and 4. This is a contradiction.

The sense of condescension comes from “oh great”, “absolutely nothing new”, “foolish”, and claim 5.

Claims 2 and 5 suggest some kind bias but I’m not sure how to classify it. Whatever it is, they give me a gross feeling.

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