5 ms·
Actually, the title claims something, what the study doesn't. It states: "More nurturing home reading environment prior to kindergarten may stimulate brain dev
by yokaze 7y ago
Actually, the title claims something, what the study doesn't. It states:
"More nurturing home reading environment prior to kindergarten may stimulate brain development supporting language and literacy skills, reinforcing the need for further study."
It is an observational study, which tries to correct for various obvious factors, but they cannot separate the environment, where more home reading is happening from actual more home reading (vs screen time).
- tgv 7y agoWorse: brain scans can't prove this kind of claim at all, so the title is really yet another piece of lousy science journalism. The only support comes from old-fashioned cognitive tests, and the effect was only found for linguistic skills. So yeah.
- vanderZwan 7y agoIsn't the impact of parents who provide a "nurturing environment" versus those who don't pretty well established?[0] If so, then that definitely needs to be accounted for before anything can be said about what kind of nurturing environment works best. [0] I must admit I base this on Oliver Sacks' account of Dr Hilde Schlesinger's work on mother-child relationships all the way back in the seventies - but as far as "knowledge heuristics" go, I think "trusting that Oliver Sacks did his homework" is a pretty good one.
- toasterlovin 7y ago> Isn't the impact of parents who provide a "nurturing environment" versus those who don't pretty well established? Studies which control for genetic confounding (twin and adoption studies) tend to show that parents have essentially zero impact on how children turn out. Genetics explains about half of the variance we see in how people turn out. The test is randomness. Caveats: within the range of normal. Obviously seriously injuring or killing your child has a permanent affect on how they turn out.
- toasterlovin 7y ago*test: rest
- savanaly 7y agoThe other half isn't random, it's mostly "non-shared environment", in other words the environment outside the home, whether that be school or play with friends or whatever. My source for this is the book The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris. IIRC she concludes the most likely reality is that personality is shaped 50% by genetics, 45% by non-shared environment and 5% shared environment (i.e. parenting). Big caveat to all this: this is personality as in how one relates to the outside world, not how one relates to their parents, which is indeed strongly determined by parenting and one of the reasons what so many studies that studied the link between parenting and kids' personality characteristics (almost invariably measured in the presence of mommy or daddy) found such a link.
- jacobolus 7y ago“Non-shared environment” just means anything that differs between the two kids. This could include their different treatment by the same adults, their different choices of activities, differences in the subconscious mental processes, their different adopted roles inside the family, their different diseases or injuries, their asymmetrical relationship with each-other, etc. It doesn’t have to be outside the home. Twin studies don’t reveal exactly what the causes were of different outcomes. All they can do is statistically split causes into broad classes based on the differences between twins raised together or apart and based on the differences between identical vs. fraternal twins.