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Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#141

Post by akhet »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #86
fhood wrote: post #2

I grew up in a household that had passed that 350 book mark, and beyond all of the actual meaningful improvements it has made to my life, it also meant that reading comprehension on standardized testing was laughably easy. So teach your kids to love books, and enjoy reading. It doesn't have to be high-brow intellectually challenging shit, just make sure that they associate books with fun.

>> it also meant that reading comprehension on standardized testing was laughably easy I'm actually curious to hear how various HNers have done on on standardized reading comprehension tests. I grew up with massive bookcases in the house, I've now populated my own, I read a lot, get a lot out of it, and enjoy it. On the ACT I had perfect scores on every category but a literal 0 on reading comprehension. As far as I'm…

I think standardized tests are just not the way to measure reading comprehension, and questions like those in the article you linked are totally detached from reality. I personally managed to get by okay on them, but it seems pretty well understood that true comprehension - at least when it comes to fiction - is best gotten at in a more discussion based setting with more flexible interpretative possibilities.

I actually had a whole other experience being a really slow reader, and got taken out of other subjects to spend more time on it even though I scored "college level" on vocabulary. Always wondered if it's due to some mild dyslexia or something.

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#142

Post by kirsebaer »

jdlyga wrote: post #75

Definitely. When I was little, my parents had this amazing book about each of the planets in the solar system from the late 80s. It had all these theoretical paintings of what the surface of each planet looks like (or the interior of Jupiter). I didn't understand the science since it was more adult-focused. But it was definitely good to have around.

National Geographic Picture Atlas of Our Universe (1980). I loved that book as a kid!

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#143

Post by ldiracdelta »

drb91 wrote: post #139
ldiracdelta wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Genetics is messy and non-exact, but on the _average_ IQ is highly heritable.

On the average, IQ is 100. That is quite heritable. I’m not sure that’s meaningful genetically. Even correlated high IQ across generations can easily be a nuture over nature deal—see the above article for one hypothesis. Finally, even if high IQ is genetically heritable, it may still require cultural or experiential “activation” to nuture intrinsic ability. There are simply too many variables to casually state any ca…

No, the average of white people was normed at 100. I'm saying the average case is that people are the average of their parents. I'm not a genetic determinist and I am not an environmental determinist, but there is vast amounts of evidence that IQ is, for a large proportion of the causality, a heritable trait.

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#144

Post by firebones »

snowwrestler wrote: post #131
cm2012 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually love your moderation, dang, and agree with you 99.99% of the time. But I think the parent here's criticism of the article does add something - the idea of genetics as a powerful confounding variable. He could have expanded on it, but it didn't add nothing.

"Accounting for genetic confounds" is extremely difficult--so difficult that no one in the world knows how to do it reliably--for basically any aspect of human behavior. So the dismissal reads like "there's no excuse for not doing an extremely difficult thing that no one knows how to do reliably." I don't find that to be a useful or informative comment, so I agree with dang's approach here.

I give the post credit in that it provoked your comment and some potentially enlightening discussion for someone not entirely familiar with the study of human behavior (like me). For instance, I would have thought that twin studies might be considered reliable for purposes of accounting for genetic confounds with respect to aspects of human behavior. It sounds from your comment that they are not.

On the OP getting warned, it wasn't immediately clear to me if the objection was more about a) knowledge that Matthew Yglesias didn't read the study and therefore was not in a position to summarize his analysis with a pithy analogy and be quoted, b) the use of any pithy analogy itself, or c) the use of an analogy that seemed to explain a confounding issue? There seemed to be some additional, non-obvious context missing (at least to me) that led to the warning.

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#145

Post by TallGuyShort »

snowwrestler wrote: post #135
TallGuyShort wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet standardized test writers seem to think they understand those choices better than the authors themselves.

Critics have an opportunity to understand those choices better than the authors themselves because critics have the opportunity to look at the work from a different perspective. Just because every bit of writing is a choice, that doesn't mean the author him- or herself fully understood why they made that choice. We're all shaped by our own life experiences, our family, the time in which we grew up, etc. Often, it's e…

I'm sorry you completely lost me in the second paragraph. If reading comprehension comes anywhere near connecting an author's life experience to their word choice, then I'll gladly take my 0 and call the whole thing garbage. Sure, coaching and therapy work. They're also fields that churn out massive amounts of pseudo-science when it suits the author's ego.

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#146

Post by solipsism »

kurttheviking wrote: post #117
tombert wrote: post #67

My parents would basically (with a few exceptions due to price) buy me any book I wanted growing up (without it hitting into my allowance); they thought it was incredibly important to grow up well-read, and even more important to learn how to teach yourself stuff, and similarly every standardized test I took was insultingly easy. I'm definitely not some pillar of intellectual vigor either (I don't even have a college…

>That said, I realize that one anecdote doesn't mean anything. Nevetheless, I appreciate the hack you suggested of excluding books from allowance. As a parent, that's something I'll now implement. Thanks for sharing.

Do you charge your kids' allowance for food? Rent? If you all go out to eat?

It's odd to me that anyone would ever think of charging their child for a book.

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#147

Post by solipsism »

I'll be the devil's advocate. There's this idea out there that you should get your kids reading, no matter what they read. I see the idea expressed here, and I see it expressed in my kids' school.

I wonder what that idea is based on. Any actual experimental studies that imply a causal link between any kind of reading and intelligence or success or some such metric? Anything to show how a heavy-reading childhood compares to a heavy-videogames childhood?

The answer is of course no. You can't run such a study and have it be experimental. So I'm extremely skeptical of this idea.

Not that I keep books from my children. Reading is one of life's great joys, and that's enough of a reason to encourage it, in my opinion.

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#148

Post by solipsism »

jondubois wrote: post #19

I never enjoyed reading fiction. Fiction trains your mind to look for fictitious narratives in real life; it distorts your perception of life and makes the world a worse place for others who don't follow those narratives.

Got anything to back up your wild... dare I say fictitious... claims?

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#149

Post by amanaplanacanal »

solipsism wrote: post #146
kurttheviking wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That said, I realize that one anecdote doesn't mean anything. Nevetheless, I appreciate the hack you suggested of excluding books from allowance. As a parent, that's something I'll now implement. Thanks for sharing.

Do you charge your kids' allowance for food? Rent? If you all go out to eat? It's odd to me that anyone would ever think of charging their child for a book.

I have heard of parents making kids buy their own clothing out of allowance, as a way of teaching them the value of money and how to shop responsibly.

Re: Large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency: study

#150

Post by amanaplanacanal »

ldiracdelta wrote: post #143
drb91 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the average, IQ is 100. That is quite heritable. I’m not sure that’s meaningful genetically. Even correlated high IQ across generations can easily be a nuture over nature deal—see the above article for one hypothesis. Finally, even if high IQ is genetically heritable, it may still require cultural or experiential “activation” to nuture intrinsic ability. There are simply too many variables to casually state any ca…

No, the average of white people was normed at 100. I'm saying the average case is that people are the average of their parents. I'm not a genetic determinist and I am not an environmental determinist, but there is vast amounts of evidence that IQ is, for a large proportion of the causality, a heritable trait.

Wikipedia says: "The heritability of IQ for adults is between 47% and 53% with some more-recent estimates as high as 70% and 76%."
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