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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)

#61

Post by incompatible »

nradov wrote: post #18
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.

I suppose that a lot of economic activity isn't really essential and can be shut down without problems. E.g., cruise ships no longer sailing, or making gold watches. Lack of these kinds of goods and services is unlikely to do any damage to cognitive functions.

It would be interesting to refine "poverty" to identify exactly what the minimum healthy level of "consumption" for a typical human is going to be. It doesn't seem to me that it's very high: food, clean water, safe housing, a bit of electricity for cooking etc., and ideally connectivity to the wider world, e.g., a computer with an internet connection. I suppose you could say that that's actually quite a lot, and brings you up to Western industrial society standards. But I suspect that with an industrial economy, all of that can be provided to the entire population with relatively little effort, e.g., if people were working a couple of days a week.

Any medical requirements would be on top of that of course.

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

#62

Post by refurb »

aabeshou wrote: post #30
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…

I think that "disease" is a misleading term, because it makes it sound like an act of god or nature. I'd say it's more like a moral evil. Because there are people in power who have the ability to eradicate this, simply by paying their workers more, or allocating government money to public services rather than to tax cuts for the rich, but they don't. They push austerity, they exploit greedily, and those are deliberat…

You think it's possible to "eradicate" poverty?

Poverty is relative, not absolute. Even if you gave everyone in the country $50,000 in UBI, you'd still have poverty, because you'd have people at the bottom of the income range who can't afford what others can.

The only way to possibly eradicate it is if you made everyone equal - same take home pay, no inheritance, no monetary gifts, etc. Everyone has the same net income at the end of the day.

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

#63

Post by thaumasiotes »

downerending wrote: post #52
xyzzyz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain to me what the difference is?

Not OP, but statistical significance has to do with how _sure_ you are that there is an effect. It doesn't really say anything about how _large_ the effect is. It's pretty obvious that gender can't be a top predictor of memory, intelligence, etc. The reason is that even if there is a definite difference where males are better than females, it'd be a modest delta between two bell curves. That would leave huge numbers…

Stipulating most of your comment, gender can still easily be a top predictor of memory / intelligence / etc., because "top" is an ordinal concept. That just says it has more of an effect than other predictors.

But see also https://sci-hub.tw/https://amstat.tandfonline.com/doi/full/1... , finding that the top predictor (among those investigated) of a police officer shooting a civilian is "the officer is black", narrowly beating out "the officer is rapidly accumulating negative marks in his file". Are there a large number of pairings in which a white officer shoots someone and a black officer doesn't? Sure, but the effect of race is still enormous in this case. ("Black officers were 3.3 times more likely to shoot than other officers.")

I would expect the effect of sex to dwarf the effect of race, but the study is limited to police officers that exist, of which more than 92% in the sample are male. So probably there's some restriction of range.

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

#64

Post by xyzzyz »

jacobolus wrote: post #49
xyzzyz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaping to conclusions about what his or her unstated assumptions must have been If you don’t assume that the subtest scores are the same across sexes, the “qualified questioning speculation” that there is something wrong with control variables makes no sense. How does one tease out the difference between inherent biological differences vs. differences caused by a lifetime spent in the differing social/cultural envir…

Twin studies don’t help you with this particular question. Beyond that, there are plenty of scholars who question the common interpretation of twin studies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study#Criticism > all points in the direction of genetic causation when it comes to cognitive traits To be precise, some evidence points in the direction that some variation in cognitive traits is “heritable”. It is obvious to e…

To be precise, some evidence points in the direction that some variation in cognitive traits is “heritable”.

Yes, this is more precise, but "heritability" is a technical term that I try to avoid, because when some people are not familiar with its technical meaning, it leads to all kinds of confusion when others do use it in the technical meaning. On the other hand, "heritability" very much implies genetic causation in every meaningful sense.

It is obvious to everyone that there are substantial effects on cognitive traits due to malnutrition, disease, exposure to toxins, physical violence, persistent emotional trauma

It is by no means obvious. It depends on what you count as "substantial", what degree of malnutrition, what diseases, what toxins, what kind of physical violence, etc.

It is at least plausible that large-scale differences in the treatment of boys vs. girls could have effects on cognitive traits.

It is plausible, alas I have not seen much evidence for that effect. There is scarce evidence for malnutrition having effect of cognitive ability, but there is some. However, I haven't seen any evidence on shared or non-shared environment causing any sex differences in cognitive ability.

but in some countries with more equal social/educational environments those differences in scores entirely disappear.

I think this is rather more of an artifact of their educational systems putting finger on a scale where it wants. Consider, for example, that in both Iceland and Sweden, mentioned in the article as places where girls matched or exceeded boys achievement, 5 out of last 6 contestants on IMO were boys, and similar disparity happened in previous years. Instead of focusing on outliers, I recommend looking at the whole picture.

It should be mentioned that Jensen’s work has been highly controversial and has kicked off a lively debate. Some of the biggest promoters of Jensen’s work have been quite unsavory characters. Like all scholarly work (and especially all work seized on more by activists than scholars) it should be read critically and taken in the context of a wider discourse.

This is an argument without an argument, and smear by association. Jensen is the most renowned scientist in the field of psychometry and intelligence research. You imply that there's something wrong with him, but do not actually give any concrete criticism.

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

#65

Post by ksk »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #59
jpindar wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's going to be a lot of homeless people as soon as the various state's eviction bans are lifted.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Who are landlords going to find to replace their tenants that didn't have a job for 6 months? Another unemployed tenant?

Well if the owner of the property can't balance out their own finances, they could just sell it. Super anecdotal, but I'm hearing a lot of people are looking to invest in the real estate market now.

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

#66

Post by jacobush »

refurb wrote: post #62
aabeshou wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that "disease" is a misleading term, because it makes it sound like an act of god or nature. I'd say it's more like a moral evil. Because there are people in power who have the ability to eradicate this, simply by paying their workers more, or allocating government money to public services rather than to tax cuts for the rich, but they don't. They push austerity, they exploit greedily, and those are deliberat…

You think it's possible to "eradicate" poverty? Poverty is relative, not absolute. Even if you gave everyone in the country $50,000 in UBI, you'd still have poverty, because you'd have people at the bottom of the income range who can't afford what others can. The only way to possibly eradicate it is if you made everyone equal - same take home pay, no inheritance, no monetary gifts, etc. Everyone has the same net inco…

Sort of true but there are so many problems with food insecurity and other things, the relative poverty dwarfs.

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

#67

Post by hyperpallium »

I thought working memory (WM) was mostly number of items recalled, and for most people it's 5-7. The actual test they used would benefit from exposure to video games (poverty would affect access):

> a screen that displayed one, two, or three dots for 2 s and instructed to remember where the dot(s) were located (Figure S2b). The screen then went blank (for 0.1 or 3 s), after which it changed color indicating that participants should touch the screen precisely where the dot(s) had appeared.

Not a serious criticism, more about the nature of WM and how to measure it.

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

#69

Post by 364738299 »

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 the correct word in this context actually gender or would it be sex? Given the context, the difference seems like it would be relevant.

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

#70

Post by aabeshou »

refurb wrote: post #62
aabeshou wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that "disease" is a misleading term, because it makes it sound like an act of god or nature. I'd say it's more like a moral evil. Because there are people in power who have the ability to eradicate this, simply by paying their workers more, or allocating government money to public services rather than to tax cuts for the rich, but they don't. They push austerity, they exploit greedily, and those are deliberat…

You think it's possible to "eradicate" poverty? Poverty is relative, not absolute. Even if you gave everyone in the country $50,000 in UBI, you'd still have poverty, because you'd have people at the bottom of the income range who can't afford what others can. The only way to possibly eradicate it is if you made everyone equal - same take home pay, no inheritance, no monetary gifts, etc. Everyone has the same net inco…

> Poverty is relative, not absolute

That's.... just not true, and I feel like you don't really know what poverty is if you say that. Poverty is not just definitionally being in some lower percentile. Poverty is misery because you don't have financial power to meet your basic needs, or have to sacrifice all your time and comfort to do so. There's nothing relative about going hungry, living in bad housing with heat that doesn't work, working 2 jobs and sleeping 4 hours a night, etc.

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