Child Development
Blogging for the inverterately lazy
Hello, to my now single reader. (I still think it’s my mom…)
Anyway, I’ve obviously not got my act together to blog like Megan McArdle, and as I’m thinking more and more, argue like Don Boudreaux (of whom I am enough of a fanboy to recently buy donboudreauxismyhero.com after seeing some sympatico from Steven Landsburg and [...]
Strange names likely screw with your kid’s future
Do unusual names really affect future outcomes for your children? A study out of the States by David E. Kalist and Daniel Y. Lee - First Names and Crime: Does Unpopularity Spell Trouble? - suggests that this might be true.
Their objective in the study:
We investigate the relationship between first name popularity and juvenile delinquency to [...]
Economic experience in formative years affects adult attitudes
In a paper entitled Depression Babies: Do Macroeconomic Experiences Affect Risk-Taking? (PDF) Ulrike Malmendier and Stefan Nagel try to determine what effect the larger economic environment during childhood has on adult economic decision making. They lead in with the idea that people are biased and will incorporate all available historical data from their experience. From [...]
Stay grumpy and you’ll have a more realistic worldview…
A 2008 paper out of Australia, entitled “Can bad weather improve your memory? An unobtrusive field study of natural mood effects on real-life memory” attempts to show the effects of mood on subjects ability to recall items recently seen in a shop.
Using weather as a proxy for mood, what they found was those who were [...]
White guys do not look all alike…
Catching up child development and behaviour related articles that I’ve seen and read over the past few weeks.
A study was recently published by Sophie Labrecht, Lara J. Pierce, Michael J. Tarr and, James W. Tanaka, from Brown University and the University entitled “Perceptual Other-Race Training Reduces Implicit Racial Bias“. The team attempted to:
…examine the relationship [...]
Children and early schooling effects
A couple of articles from the Berkley Electronic Press present some narrow but interesting things about child development.
Maria D. Fitzpatrick suggests:
For disadvantaged children residing in small towns and rural areas, Universal Pre-K availability increases both reading and mathematics test scores at fourth grade as well as the probability of students being on-grade for their age.
But [...]
Holiday medical myths
An article posted on the BMJ site clears up a few myths peripherally related to the holidays, including:
Sugar causes hyperactivity in children
Suicides increase over the holidays
Poinsettia toxicity
Excess heat loss in the hatless
The first I’ve known for a while, but it’s refreshing to have a few more tidbits available for debate when the need arises.
In a [...]
Children have innate numeracy
A excellent article from the Economist describes a variety of studies - but primarily one by Brian Butterworth - that show that the ability to count, or more simply, the ability to recognize the number differences in small collections of objects is built in. From Dr. Butterworth’s paper:
Here, using classical methods of developmental psychology, we [...]
Marking with red is aggressive
Queensland state government has published educational changes that pointedly suggest marking with red pen is aggressive and may harm the fragile egos of children. In addition to marking with more subdued colours, such as blue or black (likely to be culled for racist overtones), the guide also includes mandated peer reviewing and tutoring - of [...]
Disincenting everyone is a poor policy idea
I stumbled across this book by Daniel Raventos distributed by the University of Michigan Press. In it Mr. Raventos suggests that everyone should have, freely available, a subsistence income with no strings attached. He supports this idea with these perceived benefits:
Anyone could opt out of employment at any time. Those with few skills would no [...]
Change diapers often! (just in case you didn’t know)
Best study conclusion I read this past week:
Among infants wearing disposable diapers, there is an increased risk of [Urinary Tract Infection] as the frequency of changing diapers decreases.
Boy am I glad I read the study, I was getting this diaper changing thing all wrong…
addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.saucecaptain.com%2F2008%2F12%2Fchange-diapers-often-just-in-case-you-didnt-know%2F’;
addthis_title = [...]
Good teeth help women in the labour market
Sherry Glied and Matthew Neidell attempt to show in a recent paper that having good teeth is an asset in the labour market.
Their study tracked the earnings of a mix of people comparing those who grew up in communities with fluoridated drinking water and those without. They came to a variety of conclusions based on [...]
Gaming addicts don’t exist
In a bold, yet startlingly obivious, move the world’s only gaming addiction treatment centre has admitted that chronic gamers are not gaming addicts. After two years of operation the clinic in Amsterdam says that it has become clear that 90% of excessive gamers are merely poorly socialized. The other 10% are compulsive in general and [...]
Parents are confused about how to measure children’s weight
A study by Pene Schmidt, released last month, has the plug: 4 In 10 Parents Wrong On Whether Their Child Is Under Or Overweight. While this is an interesting statistic it seems that the study also identified that:
…different methods of assessing children’s weight – such as BMI or waist circumference – result in different rates [...]
New theory of autism development
A quick note about an interesting new theory on the development of autism and schizophrenia through genetic competition. Bernard Crespi and Christopher Badcock suggest that competition between mother’s genes, with a greater disposition toward PSDs (psychotic spectrum disorders) and father’s genes with a bias towards ASDs (Autism spectrum disorders), seems likely to explain the rise [...]
Sleepless kids pack on the pounds
Jacques Montplaisir from U Montréal presents a study demonstrating that the more sleep your children get - up to 11 hours per day - the less likely they are to gain weight and be hyperactive. In general it seems that:
One quarter of children that sleep less than 10 hours per night, but only one tenth [...]
Like I thought, most strollers suck
After years of railing - mostly quietly, and only to close family - about how annoying strollers are, comes some ammunition against their pervasive use.
Suzanne Zeedyk, in conjunction with Sutton Trust, worked to find the affects of stroller seat orientation on children. When comparing the state of children in forward or rear facing carriers a [...]
Yelling improves performance? Nope, it’s random.
While the post I got this from is from an HR blog the insight from the book The Drunkard’s Walk is excellent with respect to child discipline.
Essentially what Leonard Modlinow says is that given that most outcomes and performance are heavily random, it’s unlikely that yelling at your kids (or subordinates in business) for poor [...]
Saskatchewan high school to nix fails
Saskatoon High School, Nutana Collegiate, under auspices of Principal Shirley Figley is considering not putting failing grades on student report cards, replacing sub-50s with an incomplete or no mark. Figley says:
…teachers don’t want their students to fail… [and] We don’t need to degrade the student by giving them a number
Based on what I’ve read about [...]
London boroughs fighting musical terrorism
In a huge push to ensure the safety of chemically enhanced ravers all over the London, police are targeting live music performances that don’t comply with new strict discloser rules.
Detective Superintendent Dave Eyles of London states:
Music promotions attract people who have a propensity to use violence. That’s not speculation. We have a duty to prevent [...]
Gestational diabetes and lower test results
In a study from Université Laval, researchers compared the language skills of children from mothers with gestational diabetes (GD) to a control group. While nothing in the summary shows specifics, children whose mothers had GD exhibit poorer results on tests of verbal vocabulary and grammar. These findings are tempered by suggestions that:
…the impact of pregnancy-related [...]
Child care subsidies and child development
Chris M. Herbst and Erdal Tekin have produced a study that suggests:
that subsidy receipt in the year before kindergarten lowers reading and math test scores and increases a variety of behavior problems at kindergarten entry.
This they surmise that these children exhibit issues since they are more likely than average to have substantially less than decent [...]
But I tried really hard. Honest.
From the Post comes an article about a highly entertaining study that shows the level of entitlement of university students. Ellen Greenberg from UC Irvine polled 400 undergrads and developed some conclusions from the results. From the article:
Ms. Greenberger’s study reveals that students who are academically entitled are more likely to engage in academic cheating, [...]
Lower pensions equals more children
From Vox comes a summary of a paper by Vincenzo Galasso:
According to the “kids as consumption good” theory, affected individuals should have lower fertility, since – due to the reforms – they have lower lifetime income and can thus only afford to “consume” fewer kids. The “old age security” motive suggests instead that affected individuals [...]
Kids who watch sex on TV more likely to have sex
In a study published this month in Pediatrics, RAND concludes that teenagers that watch sexual or sexually suggestive shows on TV are more likely to have sex and more likely to become pregnant, than their peers who watch tamer fare. From the NPR site:
Anita Chandra, a behavioral scientist at RAND and lead author of the [...]
Boozing and baby
A new study in the International Journal of Epidemiology suggests that having a couple of drinks a week during pregnancy isn’t the danger that some politicized folks would have you believe. What’s quite interesting is that in the past it’s been quite difficult to find studies that looked at (the likely majority of) women that [...]
Less smart but more average
Right outta the Economist. Sounds like true a true socialist utopia - redistribution of education to the point that average intelligence drops.
Based on Professor Michael Shayer’s 30+ year study, the Economist article suggests that while the average has dropped:
More than a fifth of youngsters got high scores [in 1976] …Now only a tenth do… and [...]
Starting small
Couple of moderatly interesting papers ended up in the this week’s NBER newsletter:
#1 - Henry Sauermann & Wesley M. Cohen in What Makes Them Tick? Employee Motives and Firm Innovation write: “Overall, intrinsic motives, particularly the desire for intellectual challenge, appear to benefit innovation more than extrinsic motives such as pay.”
While the abstract is lean [...]
