5 ms·

Have there been any studies separating "natural talents and gifts" from a privileged upbringing where education was prioritized from the moment of birth? I don'

by skulk 5y ago

Have there been any studies separating "natural talents and gifts" from a privileged upbringing where education was prioritized from the moment of birth? I don't think enough attention is paid to what happens during the critical period of early child development (0-3 years of age). If it turns out that "natural talents and gifts" are really just due to a better critical period for the child, then the liberals here are really shooting themselves in the foot with this argument.

crackercrews 5y ago
Check out "twin studies" for good evidence that nature plays a significant role, not just nurture.
- freemint 5y ago
  Are you aware of Twin studies that also control for pregnancy? Meaning two quiet identical children are born and raised by mothers of different social class?
  - csee 5y ago
    Possibly but they're not perfect either. If the hypothesis is that discrimination post-birth is tied to innate characteristics, then presumably both twins will face similar discrimination and this will correlated their environment, even though they've never met and were raised by different people. That said, twin studies do provide substantial evidence that giftedness is highly heritable and probably significantly genetic.
    - freemint 5y ago
      I mean either you are aware of such studies or you aren't. What do you mean with you are possibly aware of such studies? I am well aware of how twin studies but any claim about the genetic component kinda falls apart for me based on them as the children were in the same pregnant mother at the same time.
      - csee 5y ago
        I meant they've possibly been done, just that I don't know either way. > any claim about the genetic component kinda falls apart for me based on them as the children were in the same pregnant mother at the same time. They do somewhat control for pregnancy by comparing identical vs fraternal twins, and finding a higher correlation in intelligence between the former, as well as a far more similar brain structure in regions known to be related to intelligence (frontal cortex). Anyway, it's impossible to get rid of all confounds via twin studies. But this doesn't mean that twin studies provide zero evidence. It just means the evidence can't be fully conclusive. It just strongly points in the direction of genetics.
        freemint 5y ago
        While Twin studies can explain like 50% of the observed variance with heritability of IQ, genome wide association studies using Polygenic scores are only able to predict 5% of the variance from the genome itself when n=O(10^6). The truth is most likely somewhere between those two. Predicting IQ from genetic information alone should remove all the of compounding factors (except those introduced by IQ measurement itself) but can only serve as a lower bound unless predictor overfitted the study data.
        csee 5y ago
        Where did you get 50%? Wikipedia says "Early twin studies [show] 57% and 73%, with the most recent studies [showing] 80%."[1] > The truth is most likely somewhere between those two. > but can only serve as a lower bound unless predictor overfitted the study data. Yes, but the truth is likely somewhere much closer to the upper bound (twin studies) than the lower bound (genome studies). Genome studies are only good for lower bounds. They're a new methodology that isn't good with complex traits. For example, they can only explain 20-30% of the variability in hair color even though we know that hair color is almost 100% genetic due to the observation that identical twins always have the same hair color. Intelligence is much more complex than hair color, so it's no surprise that this method has failed to explain more than 5%. Further, these studies often rely on weak proxies like educational attainment because of the difficulty of IQ testing at scale, and the studies that do try to IQ test at scale suffer from small sample sizes which impacts the ability to find results due to being underpowered. Also, IQ becomes more correlated with parents as you age, suggesting childhood environment plays a less important role. In addition, the jump in correlation from fraternal to identical suggests more role for genetics than merely a few %. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
  - jimbokun 5y ago
    Yes, I remember reading about "separated at birth" twin studies, too lazy to look it up right now. But I remember they found a surprising amount of similarities in twins brought up in different environments.
bgorman 5y ago
Do you really believe that Jacobi, Euler, Gauss and Ramanujan were just beneficiaries of privileged upbringing?
- BeetleB 5y ago
  Do you really believe they would have benefited that much from "advanced" classes in high school?
  - csee 5y ago
    That has nothing to do with the question of whether there's such a thing as natural ability.
    - BeetleB 5y ago
      The wider discussion is about how to structure public math education. If we're not going to connect it to the details of said education, then it is a moot point to discuss. Of all the things to evaluate the policy on, this is a real poor proxy as whether there are gifted people or not usually has little bearing on the overall health of math education across a very highly populated state. I never disagreed with whether they exist or not. I just don't see why this is such a sore point for people. I can virtually guarantee that the existing education system in CA didn't really benefit the gifted folks either. If I were setting up the program for a whole state, whether it will be good for a Jacobi/Euler/Gauss is totally irrelevant. We're not going to make people who show up once every 50-100 years be a major factor in educating millions of people.
      - crackercrews 5y ago
        This is a straw man. My original point (root level comment) was that the authors of this plan do not believe there are any innate differences in math ability, full stop. A reply to my comment supported my position by showing that obviously there are examples of people who are extreme outliers in terms of math ability. This proves the point that there are differences in innate math ability. Your reply is that we shouldn't design a state-wide math program for extreme outliers. But no one said we should! We only said that we should design a math program that acknowledges a diversity in innate math ability (as proven by the existence of extreme outliers, and the many, many less extreme outliers).

by skulk 5y ago

crackercrews 5y ago

Check out "twin studies" for good evidence that nature plays a significant role, not just nurture.

freemint 5y ago
Are you aware of Twin studies that also control for pregnancy? Meaning two quiet identical children are born and raised by mothers of different social class?
- csee 5y ago
  Possibly but they're not perfect either. If the hypothesis is that discrimination post-birth is tied to innate characteristics, then presumably both twins will face similar discrimination and this will correlated their environment, even though they've never met and were raised by different people. That said, twin studies do provide substantial evidence that giftedness is highly heritable and probably significantly genetic.
  - freemint 5y ago
    I mean either you are aware of such studies or you aren't. What do you mean with you are possibly aware of such studies? I am well aware of how twin studies but any claim about the genetic component kinda falls apart for me based on them as the children were in the same pregnant mother at the same time.
    - csee 5y ago
      I meant they've possibly been done, just that I don't know either way. > any claim about the genetic component kinda falls apart for me based on them as the children were in the same pregnant mother at the same time. They do somewhat control for pregnancy by comparing identical vs fraternal twins, and finding a higher correlation in intelligence between the former, as well as a far more similar brain structure in regions known to be related to intelligence (frontal cortex). Anyway, it's impossible to get rid of all confounds via twin studies. But this doesn't mean that twin studies provide zero evidence. It just means the evidence can't be fully conclusive. It just strongly points in the direction of genetics.
      - freemint 5y ago
        While Twin studies can explain like 50% of the observed variance with heritability of IQ, genome wide association studies using Polygenic scores are only able to predict 5% of the variance from the genome itself when n=O(10^6). The truth is most likely somewhere between those two. Predicting IQ from genetic information alone should remove all the of compounding factors (except those introduced by IQ measurement itself) but can only serve as a lower bound unless predictor overfitted the study data.
        csee 5y ago
        Where did you get 50%? Wikipedia says "Early twin studies [show] 57% and 73%, with the most recent studies [showing] 80%."[1] > The truth is most likely somewhere between those two. > but can only serve as a lower bound unless predictor overfitted the study data. Yes, but the truth is likely somewhere much closer to the upper bound (twin studies) than the lower bound (genome studies). Genome studies are only good for lower bounds. They're a new methodology that isn't good with complex traits. For example, they can only explain 20-30% of the variability in hair color even though we know that hair color is almost 100% genetic due to the observation that identical twins always have the same hair color. Intelligence is much more complex than hair color, so it's no surprise that this method has failed to explain more than 5%. Further, these studies often rely on weak proxies like educational attainment because of the difficulty of IQ testing at scale, and the studies that do try to IQ test at scale suffer from small sample sizes which impacts the ability to find results due to being underpowered. Also, IQ becomes more correlated with parents as you age, suggesting childhood environment plays a less important role. In addition, the jump in correlation from fraternal to identical suggests more role for genetics than merely a few %. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
- jimbokun 5y ago
  Yes, I remember reading about "separated at birth" twin studies, too lazy to look it up right now. But I remember they found a surprising amount of similarities in twins brought up in different environments.

bgorman 5y ago

Do you really believe that Jacobi, Euler, Gauss and Ramanujan were just beneficiaries of privileged upbringing?

BeetleB 5y ago
Do you really believe they would have benefited that much from "advanced" classes in high school?
- csee 5y ago
  That has nothing to do with the question of whether there's such a thing as natural ability.
  - BeetleB 5y ago
    The wider discussion is about how to structure public math education. If we're not going to connect it to the details of said education, then it is a moot point to discuss. Of all the things to evaluate the policy on, this is a real poor proxy as whether there are gifted people or not usually has little bearing on the overall health of math education across a very highly populated state. I never disagreed with whether they exist or not. I just don't see why this is such a sore point for people. I can virtually guarantee that the existing education system in CA didn't really benefit the gifted folks either. If I were setting up the program for a whole state, whether it will be good for a Jacobi/Euler/Gauss is totally irrelevant. We're not going to make people who show up once every 50-100 years be a major factor in educating millions of people.
    - crackercrews 5y ago
      This is a straw man. My original point (root level comment) was that the authors of this plan do not believe there are any innate differences in math ability, full stop. A reply to my comment supported my position by showing that obviously there are examples of people who are extreme outliers in terms of math ability. This proves the point that there are differences in innate math ability. Your reply is that we shouldn't design a state-wide math program for extreme outliers. But no one said we should! We only said that we should design a math program that acknowledges a diversity in innate math ability (as proven by the existence of extreme outliers, and the many, many less extreme outliers).