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Read the actual study [1]. It does not merely examine a correlation between decision making and poverty. It specifically tests the hypothesis that poverty has a

Read the actual study [1]. It does not merely examine a correlation between decision making and poverty. It specifically tests the hypothesis that poverty has an adverse impact on decision making. [1] http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976.abstract http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976.abstract

tosseraccount 11y ago
"Read the actual study"? wtf? It's paywalled !!! Keep downvoting me all you want. I feel my point is valid. The abstract you point to does include the methods.
- sophacles 11y ago
  No it's not - it's free with registration.
  - tosseraccount 11y ago
    Ok. I don't think they proved anything. I can't disagree with "the poor don't think right so we need to dumb things down for them" conclusion. (please read the end of the article where they make this case). The notion that poverty causes poor thinking or poor thinking causes poverty wasn't proven one way or the other.
    - rbehrends 11y ago
      It's a study; an individual study does not and cannot prove anything, it tests a hypothesis. You're welcome to disagree (and to support your disagreement with arguments), but I note that you are merely expressing personal beliefs and do not provide evidence to support those beliefs. Also: > I can't disagree with "the poor don't think right so we need to dumb things down for them" conclusion. This is not actually the conclusion they make, and you are editorializing here; it's about reducing cognitive load. For example, shortening an exam that is too long (i.e. can't reasonably be completed in the allotted time) also reduces cognitive load, but not necessarily because the students taking that exam "don't think right" and it doesn't mean that the exam is "dumbed down". The underlying problem is that for poor people, time becomes a substitute currency; you do things yourself that you cannot afford to buy or go into extra effort to reduce your expenses. But your cognitive resources to engage in such expense-optimizing behavior may also be finite, well before you run out of time, which in turn affects how much cognitive resources you have available for work, learning, etc.
      - tosseraccount 11y ago
        You don't think "reducing cognitive load" means "dumbing down" ? I'm not so much editorializing but translating to common speech. I stand by it. That's pretty much what they were saying.
        rbehrends 11y ago
        No, it's not equivalent. Reducing cognitive load includes (in particular) the elimination of extraneous, non-germane, or duplicate information or tasks. A specific example that the paper gives is filling out long forms; if you can replace a long form with a shorter one, that is a reduction in cognitive load and bureaucracy, but it is not "dumbing down" anything.
- judk 11y ago
  If you make some better decisions, you can make some extra money to pay for an article.
tosseraccount 11y ago
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6163/1169.4.full http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6163/1169.4.full Some statistician point out these guys are cherry picking. * Of the two measures of cognitive functioning in Mani et al.’s studies, only the Raven’s scores are fairly symmetrically distributed. We therefore submitted these data to linear regressions involving family income (mean-centered to facilitate interpretation) and an interaction between income and the type of scenario ... In none of the three core experiments (1, 3, and 4) was the interaction significant * The stronger cognitive impediment experienced by the poor could merely be the result of an inappropriate statistical test and an overly easy cognitive control measure. oops

tosseraccount 11y ago

"Read the actual study"? wtf? It's paywalled !!! Keep downvoting me all you want. I feel my point is valid. The abstract you point to does include the methods.

sophacles 11y ago
No it's not - it's free with registration.
- tosseraccount 11y ago
  Ok. I don't think they proved anything. I can't disagree with "the poor don't think right so we need to dumb things down for them" conclusion. (please read the end of the article where they make this case). The notion that poverty causes poor thinking or poor thinking causes poverty wasn't proven one way or the other.
  - rbehrends 11y ago
    It's a study; an individual study does not and cannot prove anything, it tests a hypothesis. You're welcome to disagree (and to support your disagreement with arguments), but I note that you are merely expressing personal beliefs and do not provide evidence to support those beliefs. Also: > I can't disagree with "the poor don't think right so we need to dumb things down for them" conclusion. This is not actually the conclusion they make, and you are editorializing here; it's about reducing cognitive load. For example, shortening an exam that is too long (i.e. can't reasonably be completed in the allotted time) also reduces cognitive load, but not necessarily because the students taking that exam "don't think right" and it doesn't mean that the exam is "dumbed down". The underlying problem is that for poor people, time becomes a substitute currency; you do things yourself that you cannot afford to buy or go into extra effort to reduce your expenses. But your cognitive resources to engage in such expense-optimizing behavior may also be finite, well before you run out of time, which in turn affects how much cognitive resources you have available for work, learning, etc.
    - tosseraccount 11y ago
      You don't think "reducing cognitive load" means "dumbing down" ? I'm not so much editorializing but translating to common speech. I stand by it. That's pretty much what they were saying.
      - rbehrends 11y ago
        No, it's not equivalent. Reducing cognitive load includes (in particular) the elimination of extraneous, non-germane, or duplicate information or tasks. A specific example that the paper gives is filling out long forms; if you can replace a long form with a shorter one, that is a reduction in cognitive load and bureaucracy, but it is not "dumbing down" anything.
judk 11y ago
If you make some better decisions, you can make some extra money to pay for an article.

tosseraccount 11y ago

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6163/1169.4.full http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6163/1169.4.full Some statistician point out these guys are cherry picking. * Of the two measures of cognitive functioning in Mani et al.’s studies, only the Raven’s scores are fairly symmetrically distributed. We therefore submitted these data to linear regressions involving family income (mean-centered to facilitate interpretation) and an interaction between income and the type of scenario ... In none of the three core experiments (1, 3, and 4) was the interaction significant * The stronger cognitive impediment experienced by the poor could merely be the result of an inappropriate statistical test and an overly easy cognitive control measure. oops