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Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

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Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#51
post #19
post #3

In the first experiment, researchers sought to observe how parents would interact with their children (in this case, 3-year-olds) after the parents were asked to describe times in which they had recently experienced scarcity. A control group of parents were instead asked to describe other recent activities. How many studies like this need to not replicate before we stop treating them seriously?

There was a report by a psychologist who said Native American mascots have a negative effect on children of native Americans. This may or may not be the case or may be true in some specific circumstances (Redskins, for example) but may not be true for all, however, many high schools are changing their team names based on this one study/conclusion which was funded by a tribe. Which is fine, but usually when there is a…

> many high schools are changing their team names based on this one study/conclusion which was funded by a tribe.

I've been following the efforts to have team names changed for quite some time and have never heard of this paper, but have heard of sustained lobbying over decades from a variety of native organizations.

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#52

A cynical explanation is that they talk less because on some level they know that talking tends to reveal needs that require money to meet.

Or because they’re working multiple jobs/overtime and do all the chores themselves. Wealthier people have stay at home parents and pay other people to do the housekeeping.

Exactly. They're out of the house more, when they're home they're busy trying to catch up with housework, and they're exhausted.

It's so much harder to engage with a small hyperactive child's fantasy world when you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, no matter how much you want to.

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#53
post #3

In the first experiment, researchers sought to observe how parents would interact with their children (in this case, 3-year-olds) after the parents were asked to describe times in which they had recently experienced scarcity. A control group of parents were instead asked to describe other recent activities. How many studies like this need to not replicate before we stop treating them seriously?

Do you hold an oracle which tells you which studies will not replicate, or is there some particular trait of the study that provably doesn't replicate?

People are good at predicting this: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/scientis...

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#54
post #3

In the first experiment, researchers sought to observe how parents would interact with their children (in this case, 3-year-olds) after the parents were asked to describe times in which they had recently experienced scarcity. A control group of parents were instead asked to describe other recent activities. How many studies like this need to not replicate before we stop treating them seriously?

>>How many studies like this need to not replicate before we stop treating them seriously?

Hard to answer this, IMO. It would be hard to stop keep versions of such anecdata from informing our personal worldviews, for example. Business knowledge is basically made out of such stuff.

Replicability, for questions like this may be the wrong bar. Should we expect a relationship between financial hardship and talking to three year olds to be the same for a group of parents in 2021 california and 1997 Tokyo?

A lot of the replication crisis is shoddy work. Bad research. But... a lot of it is a problem of the subject matter itself. It's complex, and can't be isolated. Does dumping a ton of manure in a forest result in more leaves? more flies? Hard to describe the relationship between the manure and leaves in a replicable way. You can do controlled experiments, but the lab version doesn't answer the same question... the one about complexity.

IDK... I'm not excusing the replication crisis and many of the worst affected fields do need to pay attention to the gunk they've accumulated. OTOH, we do need ways of describing relationships that are complex. "We know nothing" is insufficient.

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#55
post #3

In the first experiment, researchers sought to observe how parents would interact with their children (in this case, 3-year-olds) after the parents were asked to describe times in which they had recently experienced scarcity. A control group of parents were instead asked to describe other recent activities. How many studies like this need to not replicate before we stop treating them seriously?

It fits my world view so it must be true. Jokin aside I've seen way better studies of this kind where the parents would wear a mic at home and they would then do a word count, word analysis, etc.

Wouldn't this method have its own issues with observation awareness biases?

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#56
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if someone comes up with a paper that says the opposite (that using native American names) has a proven (by the a paid study) positive impact, since it's low stakes, we should go ahead and name teams after native American tribes?

I think we were talking about high school mascots not team names. Are those two scenarios equally low stakes? In one you change the high school mascot from a native american cartoon to an animal or something. I'm assuming native americans were not consulted with the creation of the mascot to begin with. In the other we change... what all the teams names? Is that a equivilent scenario? To be honest I'm finding it hard…

> I'm assuming native americans were not consulted with the creation of the mascot to begin with.

Seems like you are affirming the consequent and assuming it is harmful to native Americans.

You are ignoring the issue of the paper. If the decision is based on a scientific paper, but the paper is conflicted or unvalidated, that is harmful because of the misuse of the scientific paper.

If you want to change the mascot because of Native American’s preferences, that is a different matter.

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#57
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that cynical? It seems like a reasonable guess. It was my first thought before even heading to the article or comments

Good point. Even if I sincerely care only about my children, if most of their prospective needs require money to meet, the most effective response to a lack of money is to devote more time to getting money and less time to listening.

This is what infuriates me about all the "I don't care about money, I just wish mum/dad had spent more time with us and less time working" sentiment. Sure, some parents are workaholics at the expense of their kids but I'd wager the vast majority of the time, the parents hate being away from their kids and are only doing it to meet the family's financial needs.

If someone truly believes that money isn't important, it just proves their parents shielded them from the ugly side of poverty.

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you hold an oracle which tells you which studies will not replicate, or is there some particular trait of the study that provably doesn't replicate?

It's not about an Oracle. It's that the mentioning of a topic prior to some conclusion generating observation has practically never generated replicable results. Still, these studies make news all the time because they're easy to p-hack into some interesting conclusion.

Reading the study it appears they went to some pains in not revealing their intentions:

> The caregiver and child were seated across from one another at a table. The child completed an unrelated experiment with the researcher, while the caregiver completed the Scarcity or Control manipulation survey on a tablet. When the caregiver had finished, the researcher left the room under the guise of loading a second survey onto the iPad, leaving the caregiver and child alone with a toy the experimenter happened to offer as she left. A video camera and/or tape recorder recorded their interactions.

The conclusion could be that being reminded or queried about hardships has a chilling effect

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#59

My dad is from a rural area. He doesn't know how to talk intimately or how to reveal emotions. This puzzeled me a lot and made communication between us difficult. I found out later that most men in his village are like that. A lot of feelings are being swallowed in silence and not talked about. A real "word gap". I wonder if it has to do with poverty (it's a poor village) like the article says.

It's a male thing, nothing to do with poverty.

This isn't an inherently male trait, it's something that's done to boys from an early age in some societies. Men are conditioned to behave this way from an early age, and IMO it's a great tragedy.

Re: Word gap: When money’s tight, parents talk less to kids

#60
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you hold an oracle which tells you which studies will not replicate, or is there some particular trait of the study that provably doesn't replicate?

People are good at predicting this: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/08/scientis...

> People

To be specific:

> They recruited 206 volunteers—a mix of psychologists and economists, students and professors, none of whom were involved in the SSRP itself

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