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'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

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Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#191

Post by thaumaturgy »

chrischen wrote: post #187
thaumaturgy wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. By "math" I was referring to number sequences (which number comes next...), as opposed to geometric patterns (which shape comes next...); by "vocab" I was referring to analogical questions (a is to b as c is to __). If SATs are readily accepted to be affected by poverty, I fail to understand why IQ tests wouldn't be also.

Because IQ tests are administered across races, cultures, languages, education levels, and even age, and are normalized across these factors. Obviously for vocab, a Chinese person would fail if they don't understand English, so they'd translate it. For a poor American, the vocab skills required on an IQ test are pretty basic. Also, the modern SAT tests are stated by CollegeBoard[1] to NOT correlate to IQ anymore. The…

    American Psychological Association, 2003
    http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/intelligence.aspx
"People in Western cultures, he suggests, tend to view intelligence as a means for individuals to devise categories and to engage in rational debate, while people in Eastern cultures see it as a way for members of a community to recognize contradiction and complexity and to play their social roles successfully."

"Over the past several years, Sternberg and Grigorenko also have investigated concepts of intelligence in Africa. Among the Luo people in rural Kenya, Grigorenko and her collaborators have found that ideas about intelligence consist of four broad concepts: rieko, which largely corresponds to the Western idea of academic intelligence, but also includes specific skills; luoro, which includes social qualities like respect, responsibility and consideration; paro, or practical thinking; and winjo, or comprehension. Only one of the four--rieko--is correlated with traditional Western measures of intelligence."

"They also agree with studies in a number of countries, both industrialized and nonindustrialized, that suggest that people who are unable to solve complex problems in the abstract can often solve them when they are presented in a familiar context."

"Many psychologists believe that the idea that a test can be completely absent of cultural bias--a recurrent hope of test developers in the 20th century--is contradicted by the weight of the evidence. Raven's Progressive Matrices, for example, is one of several nonverbal intelligence tests that were originally advertised as "culture free," but are now recognized as culturally loaded."

    ScienceDaily, 2010
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121155220.htm
"The researchers also claim that African IQ test scores cannot be interpreted in terms of lower intelligence levels, as these scores have different psychometric characteristics than western IQ test scores. Until now, the incomparability of Western and African IQ scores had never been systematically proven."

    University of North Carolina, current curriculum
    http://www.unc.edu/~rooney/iq.htm
"In school settings, psychologists often joke that IQ is what IQ tests measure. There is a lot of truth to this adage. Ideally, IQ tests sample a wide range of experiences and they measure a person’s ability to apply learned information in new and different ways. They do not measure capacity or potential. They do provide information about cognitive skills at a given point in time.

Because IQ tests chiefly measure success in school, they are value-laden. Scores provide a statistical indication of the extent to which a person has critical schools and information, but they should not be directly equated with intelligence. Test scores are a useful index of ability, but they may reflect test-taking sophistication, personality, and attitudinal characteristics as well as learned and innate ability (Plomin, 1989)."

    Further Evidence That IQ Does Not Measure Intelligence
    http://io9.com/5959058/further-evidence-that-iq-does-not-measure-intelligence
"But some thinkers cling to the idea that IQ measures an inborn intelligence that transcends culture and schooling. If that's true, one would expect that the most abstract, "culture free" elements of IQ testing wouldn't be subject to the Flynn Effect. But they are."

"In modern cultures, more emphasis is being placed on abstraction. Students learn algebra at an earlier age than they used to, for instance, but in addition our everyday lives are full of abstractions."

    The Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, UCSD
    http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/Cole/iq.html
"This point was made very explicitly by a Kpelle anthropological acquaintance of mine who was versed in the more esoteric aspects of Kpelle secret societies and medicine (or magic, according to American stereotypes). We had been talking about what it means to be intelligent in Kpelle society (the most appropriate term is translated as "clever"). "Can you be a clever farmer?" I asked. "No," came the reply. "You can be a hardworking farmer, or you can be a lucky farmer, but we couldn't say that someone is a clever farmer. Everyone knows how to farm. We use 'clever' when we talk about the way someone gets other people to help him. Some people always win arguments. Some people know how to deal with strangers. Some people know powerful medicine. These are the things we talk about as clever.""

    Poverty Lowers IQ
    http://www.monitor.net/monitor/5-5-96/povertyiq.html
"Adjustments for socioeconomic conditions almost completely eliminate differences in IQ scores between black and white children, according to the study's co-investigators."

""The study strongly suggests that economic and learning environments of the home are the most powerful predictors of racial IQ differences in 5-year-olds," said Brooks-Gunn."

    Book Review
    http://bryanappleyard.com/flynns-iq/
"Human ­potential at birth is unchanged; we are not, in any fundamental sense, becoming a smarter species. But the way we live has changed. IQ tests were first ­established in the 19th century at a time when daily life was concrete and ­practical. The tests, however, had to be abstract to make them culturally ­neutral. People, therefore, found them harder because they were unaccustomed to such modes of thought."

"People became better at IQ tests and, steadily, the scores rose. So IQ scores are meaningless unless their date and social norms are taken into account."

(Note that this is a review of a book authored by James R Flynn, the discoverer of the Flynn Effect in IQ measurements. Previous HN commentary on this link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4461038)

--

I could pretty easily come up with a lot more like this. Or, you could strike up a conversation with HN user tokenadult, who is knowledgeable on the subject.

Either way, IQ tests are readily accepted now not to be a test for cognitive ability, and more researchers are adopting the view that it is impossible to separate cultural and environmental influences (and thus knowledge) from any other innate factors in IQ tests.

You really shouldn't assume that the people you're talking to don't know what they mean.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#192

Post by bodyfour »

mhurron wrote: post #128
ams6110 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crack Cocaine and Cocaine are not quite the same thing. Do you have any links to support this? I had always heard that chemically, they are both "cocaine" and the "crack" preparation simply allows quicker intake and thus a faster high.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_cocaine Crack is the freebase form of Cocaine. It is preferred for smoking (quicker intake ,less needed) because of the change in the evaporation point. Oddly, Crack Cocaine is just the active ingredient (cocaine), powder cocaine is cocaine hydrochloride. My original point is that no, calling it crack cocaine is not codeword for poor [insert racial slur for black people] doing stupi…

More specifically, they're equivalent if you were going to freebase the cocaine. Freebasing powdered cocaine is possible, but its complicated and dangerous -- for instance Richard Pryor famously almost died from burns received while doing it: http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20076864,00....

Crack is basically freebasing in kit form.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#193

Post by blatherer »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #191
chrischen wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because IQ tests are administered across races, cultures, languages, education levels, and even age, and are normalized across these factors. Obviously for vocab, a Chinese person would fail if they don't understand English, so they'd translate it. For a poor American, the vocab skills required on an IQ test are pretty basic. Also, the modern SAT tests are stated by CollegeBoard[1] to NOT correlate to IQ anymore. The…

American Psychological Association, 2003 http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/intelligence.aspx "People in Western cultures, he suggests, tend to view intelligence as a means for individuals to devise categories and to engage in rational debate, while people in Eastern cultures see it as a way for members of a community to recognize contradiction and complexity and to play their social roles successfully." "Over the past…

you are proving him right by copy and pasting results of a google trawl without any analysis or apparent understanding. "IQ tests are readily accepted now not to be a test for cognitive ability" is a bizarrely strong claim and so is the idea that it is "impossible to separate cultural and environmental influences". I think it's pretty clear that you are just looking for material to support pre-existing assumptions.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#194

Post by vacri »

rayiner wrote: post #29
bittired wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn lies and statistics, though. Being poor does not cause lower IQ, nor does lower IQ cause you to be poor. However, you'll find a lot of lower IQ people at poverty level. You can't guarantee that any college candidate that is poor is not going to excel, so poverty, sex, race, religion, sexual orientation, should have absolutely nothing to do with acceptance into any organization, assuming that everything else is e…

So the kids in the study were selected because their parents were poor, and the average IQ of the kids in the study was around 80. That certainly signals a correlation, and since these are kids and don't have agency over their economic situation, it suggests a direction of causation too.

Part of the IQ test includes vocabulary, and it's not that much of a leap to say that more highly-educated people have a broader, deeper vocabulary, even when controlled for cultural effects. A smaller vocabulary will give you a lower IQ. There are likely to be other factors affected by exposure to wider experiences than you might not get when impoverished; for example, in general, the more you handle numbers, the better you get at manipulating them.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#195

Post by saraid216 »

pyre wrote: post #163
rayiner wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The studies have not proven that there is a level of alcohol consumption below which there are no negative effects, but they fail to demonstrate long-term negative effects from low levels of alcohol consumption. Now, absence of proof is not proof of absence, but in what other contexts do we tell people: the studies don't show harmful effects at low levels, but you shouldn't do it anyway because the studies haven't pr…

| We do it because we as a society love to | control women This is a ridiculous claim. If anything erring on the side of caution and telling pregnant women not to drink alcohol falls under the "Think of the Children" banner. It's an effort to prevent babies from being born with issues, rather than some need to tell women to 'get back in the kitchen.'

Heh.

You don't think "Think of the Children" is part of the "Women need to be controlled" category? This is also where we get the notion that there is a magical mystical maternal mojo.

Women are resources, not players.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#196

Post by pdonis »

DanBC wrote: post #148
pdonis wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alcohol isn't really that dangerous for babies either. So you're basically saying that it's OK to roll the dice with a child, since after all it's only a 20-sided die? That a mother's temporary gratification is more important than a 5% chance of your child suffering damage?

Your phrasing is frustratingly confrontational. For example: So you're saying that it's OK to roll the dice with a child, since after all it's only a 20-sided die? That forcing a mother to restrict all alcohol, and thus suffer stress (which we know to be harmful to the child) is more important than an unknown chance of the child suffering damage from alcohol?

Your phrasing is frustratingly confrontational.

So was the phrasing of the post I responded to. He didn't even raise the question of whether the mother's drinking might have benefits (such as the one you cite) which might outweigh the risk the alcohol poses to the child. He just said, "oh, it's not really all that dangerous". That, IMO, is not a justifiable mindset for a parent.

If there is no compensating benefit, then IMO a parent should not incur any avoidable risk to a child. There must always be a reason for incurring the risk, and it must be a stronger reason than "well, I like drinking". If the mother's stress level would really be increased that much by not drinking, then that could be a valid reason. (Though I would tend to be skeptical of such a claim; is abstaining from alcohol, for a person who is not an alcoholic, really that hard, hard enough to outweigh the risk to the child's health?)

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#197

Post by rayiner »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #132
rayiner wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The studies have not proven that there is a level of alcohol consumption below which there are no negative effects, but they fail to demonstrate long-term negative effects from low levels of alcohol consumption. Now, absence of proof is not proof of absence, but in what other contexts do we tell people: the studies don't show harmful effects at low levels, but you shouldn't do it anyway because the studies haven't pr…

We only say "no" when we have actual evidence that some activity is harmful....We do it because we as a society love to control women, their behavior and their bodies, and pregnancy offers a great opportunity to exert that control. This latter theory is a bit silly. In fact, we say "no" to all sorts of things regardless of evidence that the activity is harmful. Examples include modafinil, steroids and various other b…

I'm not familiar with the side effects of steroids, etc, but nobody tells pregnant women that they shouldn't eat any salt, any fat, any carbs, etc. Nobody freaked out at a restaurant when my wife ordered a nice ribeye or a piece of chocolate cake.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#198

Post by rayiner »

pyre wrote: post #163
rayiner wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The studies have not proven that there is a level of alcohol consumption below which there are no negative effects, but they fail to demonstrate long-term negative effects from low levels of alcohol consumption. Now, absence of proof is not proof of absence, but in what other contexts do we tell people: the studies don't show harmful effects at low levels, but you shouldn't do it anyway because the studies haven't pr…

| We do it because we as a society love to | control women This is a ridiculous claim. If anything erring on the side of caution and telling pregnant women not to drink alcohol falls under the "Think of the Children" banner. It's an effort to prevent babies from being born with issues, rather than some need to tell women to 'get back in the kitchen.'

So my wife was a summer associate at a law firm while she was pregnant. The difference between having a drink with dinner and not drinking at all was the difference between being a regular summer associate, interviewing for a job, and "the pregnant one."

In our society, where drinking is an important social rite, not drinking makes you "the other" and we're tremendously eager to force women into that position based on little to no evidence that it actually has any impact on children at low levels. Even the justifications that are possible ("doctors say not to do it at all because women might drink too much") treat women like children instead of adults who are capable of evaluating truthful information from their doctors and reaching reasoned conclusions about their behavior.

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#199

Post by _m_a_u_r_i_c_e_ »

The study outcome is poverty has the bigger impact. Yet there is a lot of discussion about anything else like Alcohol etc. But think about the uncomfortable issue: What to do against poverty? Isn't it a hint that our concern should be "a human right to access minimum wealth" and how to enable it?

Re: 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result

#200

Post by Daishiman »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #135
Daishiman wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Welfare can make things much worse (misusing food funds for drugs, setting up a cycle of dependence on government funds, etc.), but welfare is a perfectly logical solution to lack of money. We made that mistake before, and can't have a whole new generation of people buying into that statist crap. Except that welfare actually works, and despite the fact that poor people are in general poor money managers, a marginal…

Especially when it translates to greater food availability. The poor in the US do not suffer from a lack of food availability. 5.1% of poor children don't get enough to eat. For comparison, 5.7% of children above 4 x poverty line don't get enough to eat. http://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa11/hstat/hsa/pages/221oo.html Food availability is a solved problem in the United States. Portraying it as a problem takes resources away f…

If you take it merely as a question of caloric intake you're right. If you're talking about the cost of high-quality and nutrient-rich food, there's a long way to go. The massive subsidizing of junk food through corn subsidies does not help, but if you try getting those calories through vegetables and quality meat you may find it's out of reach for many people, and that does have an impact on intelligence and development, especially when those cheap calories lead to obesity, diabetes, and other complications.
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