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Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation
- Mindless2112 13y agoThe importance of talking with your children during early development was also covered on an episode[1] of Lexicon Valley (referencing the same research data as this article) for those interested. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2013/06/lexicon_valley_on_research_by_betty_hart_and_todd_risley_early_childhood.html http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2013/0...
- kumarski 13y agograzie. I was looking for this one.
- wallflower 13y ago> I recently stopped to congratulate a young mother pushing her toddler in a stroller. The woman had been talking to her barely verbal daughter all the way up the block, pointing out things they had passed, asking questions like "What color are those flowers?" and talking about what they would do when they got to the park. This is a rare occurrence in my Brooklyn neighborhood, I told her. All too often, the mothers and nannies I see are tuned in to their cellphones, BlackBerrys and iPods, not their young children. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/health/29brod.html?ref=science http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/health/29brod.html?ref=sci...
- pg 13y agoI don't know whether this is true, but it feels true, and I've been operating as if it were.
- clarkm 13y agoYou're right -- it feels true, which probably explains why it has so much staying power. Though the idea has been around for decades, it was really popularized by Hart and Risley in the 90s. However, it has been popping even more frequently over the past couple years. A few months ago, when a similar article ran in the New York Times, Steven Pinked opined: > The Blank Slate lives: Yet another story on parent-child correlations that dares not mention the g-word https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/322367630331740160 https://twitter.com/sapinker/status/322367630331740160
- ShardPhoenix 13y agoJust because genetics is important doesn't mean that talking doesn't help - and the difference is that talking is in the parents' control.
- zizee 13y agoIt's weird how people are happy to say genetics plays a hand in the limits of human abilities, but when it comes to talk about intelligence, there are so many people in denial. Perhaps it is just that you can't sell as many self help books if a lot of our brain's wiring is preordained.
- a3voices 13y agoIntelligence is a mixture of upbringing and genetics. If you're raised by a pack of wolves in the woods, you'll probably be rock dumb by all measures, regardless of your DNA.
- bkirkbri 13y ago> If you're raised by a pack of wolves in the woods, you'll probably be rock dumb by all measures, regardless of your DNA. Depends on how you define "dumb". I bet you'd be insanely good at hunting and eating enough prey to survive the winter.
- telephonetemp 13y agoGoing a step further, you have to wonder if the genetic correlates of IQ (or g) affect survival and health in feral children.
- clarkm 13y agoI can't remember where I read it, but I know that hunting and tracking skills don't correlate very well with g. Though surprisingly, marksmanship does.
- deleted 13y ago
- Alex3917 13y agoC.f. the cited book by Hart & Risley, Meaningful Differences In The Everyday Experiences of Young American Children. "The more parents talked to their children, the faster the children's vocabularies were growing and the higher children's IQ test scores at age 3 and later. [...] [By age 4], an average child in a professional family would have the accumulated experience with almost 45 million words, an average child in a working-class family would have accumulated experience with 26 million words, and an average child in a welfare family would have accumulated experience with 13 million words. [...] Just to provide an average welfare child with an amount of weekly language experience equal to that of an average working-class child would require 41 hours per week of out-of-home experience as rich in words addressed to the child as that in an average professional home. [...] By the time children are 4 years old, intervention programs come too late and can provide too little experience to make up for the past." The basic idea is that the best determiner of academic success is the number of words per day spoken to the child (listening to audio/tv doesn't work, and is generally thought to be harmful, especially before age 3.) Essentially by the time kids get to kindergarten, there is already a 2+ year achievement gap between wealthy kids and poor kids, mostly for this reason. In addition to being enormous on its own, this gap then compounds greatly because of tracking, which tends to be introduced in some form or another starting around age six: "We found that first-grade ability-group placement can have persistent effects on children's achievement in school over a period of several years and may shape the expectations of children's performance held by significant others, such as parents and teachers. Whether these effects are instructional, social, or institutional, they are real, and they have implications for children's future schooling trajectories. [...] Instructional grouping may have the unintended effect of increasing inequalities in educational outcomes, largely by creating inequalities in educational resources and rewards." (I forget the author, but this is quoting in Riordan's book Equality and Achievement in the relevant section.) Anyway I'd definitely recommend reading Meaningful Differences, in addition to being a great example of how science should be done in terms of robust methodology, it's also one of the most insightful and important scientific findings of the last hundred years. The one thing I'd add though is that in addition to the total volume of language, which is the most important variable, there are a few other counterintuitive findings worth knowing about. E.g. reading aloud to your kids doesn't actually benefit their language skills, unless you purposely use certain linguistic constructs while reading to them. And there are other linguistic features you can use that are beneficial, that you wouldn't necessarily think to use without knowing the research, but I'll stop there though so as not to spoil it.
- adventured 13y agoI've always believed smart (developed capability) is taught, and genius (typically narrow high level mental capability) is born. And that all people at birth, except the relative few born with mental handicaps, are capable of being smart. A 100 to 115 IQ maxed out on potential and perspiration will get you very far in life.
- Kudzu_Bob 13y agoA 100 to 115 IQ maxed out on potential will get you very far in life, but not as far as a 130 to 145 IQ maxed out on potential will.
- lutusp 13y agoNot really. There's an upper limit to the survival value of intelligence. Not to oversimplify, but that limit is reached when the person says, "What? I should add to the world's problems by having children?" In all seriousness, the fact that the average I.Q. is located where it is, tells us that's the outcome natural selection blindly chose. And natural selection is always right.
- Kudzu_Bob 13y agoThe average IQ produced by natural selection depends on the environment. There is no ideal level of intelligence apart from environment. If the Earth had a uniform climate, terrain, and so on from pole to pole, this presumably would not be the case.
- lutusp 13y ago> If the Earth had a uniform climate, terrain, and so on from pole to pole, this presumably would not be the case. I think that would also produce an optimal IQ, just a different one. But all IQs, indeed all traits of living organisms, ultimately derive from the degree to which they contribute to fitness.
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- gault8121 13y agoThe process of expressing statements creates stronger synaptic connections (relative to reading statements). Communication is an essential part of learning and retaining ideas.
- malandrew 13y agoFWIW language gives children a tool with which they can discuss and more importantly reason about abstract concepts. The sooner you acquire a rich and varied vocabulary the sooner you can form a rich understanding about the phenomena in the world around you. Since kids learn fastest when they are young and that slows with age, a strong grasp of language means that they can absorb and understand more abstractions sooner. Measures of betweenness, distance, centrality and distance for nodes in a child's mental graph of abstractions are all likely to be better when you have a richer vocabulary at a young age. Even edges between abstractions can be linguistic abstractions like similes and metaphors, giving a child a quickness in recall of well understood abstractions to aid in the processing and understanding of novel concepts.
- eulerphi 13y agoEdges between abstractions? You lost me with your abstraction.
- opminion 13y agoThis is discussed by Steven Pinker in The Blank Slate.
- tezza 13y agoI also do not know if this is true. It seems safe to presume that it is at least a mild benefit because it is cheap and easy to do. If it were more costly in terms of child aide resourcing, then we'd have to look a lot closer at whether we should divert resources to speak-to-the-child programs. --- Some schooling like Steiner education actively de-emphasises speaking to your children until 6+. Steiner teachers would not answer a child with the factual answer, but instead posing another question. Child: "Mum, why do planes fly in the sky?" Steiner Parent: "I Wonder?" The Steiner thinking is that by posing another question you don't 'crimp' the childs' creativity. This is strictly age related and once the child is a bit older the conversation becomes more mainstream.
- pitt1980 13y agothat seems to jive well with the article about not talking to your kid in directives: "In low-income households, parents commonly speak to their children in simple commands, and participant Aneisha Newell said the week on directives was particularly significant to her. “Instead of saying, ‘go put on your shoes,’ I can say, ‘All right, it’s time to go. What else do you need? … That gives my child the chance to respond, and say, ‘shoes,’ ” said Newell, 25, who has a 4-year-old daughter and a 10-month-old son and works for a company providing recess supervision and after-school activities in Chicago Public Schools. Newell said many of her friends and relatives think she’s crazy for talking to her daughter as if she’s an adult. “I can quote this: ‘Neisha, no one wants to sit and talk to the kids like they understand’ That’s basically the response I get." (I hate that such a thought provoking article couldn't get a better discussion than a college freshman debate over nature v nurture) in my experience that's one of the best take aways from the articles, I find even really educated parents tend to give alot of commands to their kids, I would recommend mixing that up my daughter just entered the 'why' stage, the other day, I flipped it around and for 10 or so minutes, even thing she would ask say, I would ask her 'why?' it was really facinating I think it ended with: "because I am a big girl" "why" "because I pee on the potty" "ha ha, yeah I guess so" ---------------------------------- second thought I've often heard that learning a second language forces you to relearn the basics of the english language similarly, I think that putting thought in how to comminicate with little kids forces you how to relearn communication skills with all people book recommendation: http://www.amazon.com/How-Talk-Kids-Will-Listen/dp/0380570009/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1380714922&sr=8-2&keywords=how+to+talk+so+kids+will+listen+%26+listen+so+kids+will+talk http://www.amazon.com/How-Talk-Kids-Will-Listen/dp/038057000... one of the big take aways from that book was not to invalidate your kids feelings, even if it seems silly or stupid to you I find that to be a really useful comminication tip with adults too and one the most people don't do a very good job with
- drcode 13y agoI feel like every time a science article gets attention just because it "feels true" and which is based on just another retrospective cohort study (which can't untangle causation) it sends the wrong message to the public about what real substantive scientific research is like/needs to be like.
- seiji 13y agoThe same goes for if you want to teach your dog a crazy number of things casually (upstairs, downstairs, names of people, names of toys, go-to-crate, names of rooms, difference between food and water bowls, ...).
- frankosaurus 13y agoI've read many articles recently that make similar claims. Chapter 10 of NurtureShock talks about this. Anecdotally, the idea seems to be growing in popularity idea among my fellow parents. One way to capitalize on this would be to create a mobile app which functions like a pedometer, except it counts the number of words you speak to your child. Parents could talk to their kids during playtime, and the device would listen in and use natural language processing to interpret the conversation. Parents would later get a report on the frequency, complexity, and novelty of the words used. They could chart progress over time.
- devindotcom 13y agoAs I read your comment I was afraid you were going to suggest an app that speaks to your child for you, but I was pleasantly surprised. I like the idea.
- jpadkins 13y agowhy are you afraid of that idea?
- ausjke 13y agothe real deep thinkers, are not necessary good at conversation I believe, actually there is a saying "the _real_ smart people don't speak much, and they usually look dumb" sorry I did not bother to read the article, the title stopped me from reading it.
- eruditely 13y ago>I did not bother to read the article This is probably why you're not a 'real think er', and no I don't really agree with the article either.
- racl101 13y agoWay to absolve of having any real credibility and/or value in your statement by appending "I did not bother to read the article".
- utopkara 13y agoProbably any conversation is good, but conversation that carefully fuels curiosity is fun and it also induces a self-sustaining habit: http://www.jonathanmugan.com/CuriosityCycle/ http://www.jonathanmugan.com/CuriosityCycle/
- thenerdfiles 13y agoUh. "Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination." — L.W. But in the end, when you've got a government solicited to diminish your powers, nothing beats a Classical education.
- a3voices 13y agoI think it's also the same with pet dogs, at least with the intelligent breeds. If you have a border collie, talking to it a lot makes it smarter. At least it seems that way.
- Kudzu_Bob 13y agoYou should write that up and submit it to Slate. I'm sure that they would publish it.
- sharkweek 13y agoMy boss's son is one of the smartest 18 month old kids I have ever met. He communication levels are through the roof, and for words he might not be able to say, or things he might not be able to express, he knows rudimentary sign language to communicate, e.g., he has a hand signal for "I'm tired" or "I'm hungry" -- he almost never has to cry to show he needs something. It's really quite impressive.
- dinkumthinkum 13y agoDo you have children? I know ostensibly that is irrelevant but what you're describing is good and impressive but it's probably not as uncommon as you think. Baby sign language is pretty popular in the parenting world. Actually, many babies can do that at much earlier ages. Not to detract anything, just saying ... :)
- eitally 13y agoNo kidding. One of the first epiphanies parents have is the fact that their children are as smart as they are -- all they lack is experience. :)
- baq 13y agomy 15-month daughter runs to her high chair when she's hungry. sometimes she skips the chair and runs directly to the fridge. i don't think it's unusual, i hear the same things from my friends. one related anectode: my boss' 3-yo son said to him, 'dad, i'm not stupid, i'm just small' :)
- Theodores 13y agoWhat took your daughter so long? Quite a few pets sit by their kitchen feeding bowls when they get hungry. They learn to do this within a lot less time than 15 months.
- baq 13y agodidn't say she just started doing that, just that she's 15 months. she was doing this for at least a couple of months now. children really grow faster than adults comprehend...
- dreamdu5t 13y agoConversation or vocabulary? It seems to me they conflate the two simply because conversation time is correlated with higher vocabulary. Do the studies control for this?
- girvo 13y agoMy parents like to tell the storiy of my childhood. Basically, I used to think I was an adult (despite being 5) and talk to everyone. The best part, is that I _was_ treated like an adult, and am pretty intelligent these days as well :) More importantly, it gave me confidence from an early age. That's the best gift I think a child can be given, especially one that is into "fringe" pursuits.
- eulerphi 13y agoI cringed when I read you saying 'am pretty intelligent these days' Einstein, Euler, Reimann realized that the subjects and challenges were truly important, not their intelligence. Solve life, don't inflate self.
- girvo 13y agoNothing I work on is truly important. :) And I actually mean that. Not yet. Soon, perhaps, but not now. And I said "pretty intelligent", not that I was up there with the greats. I find it interesting you took that from my post!
- supo 13y agoSaying that you are intelligent is just so cringe-worthy. If you want to make a point about yourself give two small examples of what you've achieved and let the reader form an opinion.
- ethyl66 13y ago"At home there was a game that all the parents played with their children. It was called, What Did You See? Mara was about Dann’s age when she was first called into her father’s room one evening, where he sat in his big carved and coloured chair. He said to her, ‘And now we are going to play a game. What was the thing you liked best today?’ At first she chattered: ‘I played with my cousin . . . I was out with Shera in the garden . . . I made a stone house.’ And then he had said, ‘Tell me about the house.’ And she said, ‘I made a house of the stones that come from the river bed.’ And he said, ‘Now tell me about the stones.’ And she said, ‘They were mostly smooth stones, but some were sharp and had different shapes.’ ‘Tell me what the stones looked like, what colour they were, what did they feel like.’ And by the time the game ended she knew why some stones were smooth and some sharp and why they were different colours, some cracked, some so small they were almost sand. She knew how rivers rolled stones along and how some of them came from far away. She knew that the river had once been twice as wide as it was now. There seemed no end to what she knew, and yet her father had not told her much, but kept asking questions so she found the answers in herself. Like, ‘Why do you think some stones are smooth and round and some still sharp?’ And she thought and replied, ‘Some have been in the water a long time, rubbing against other stones, and some have only just been broken off bigger stones.’ Every evening, either her father or her mother called her in for What Did You See? She loved it. During the day, playing outside or with her toys, alone or with other children, she found herself thinking, Now notice what you are doing, so you can tell them tonight what you saw. She had thought that the game did not change; but then one evening she was there when her little brother was first asked, What Did You See? and she knew just how much the game had changed for her. Because now it was not just What Did You See? but: What were you thinking? What made you think that? Are you sure that thought is true? When she became seven, not long ago, and it was time for school, she was in a room with about twenty children – all from her family or from the Big Family – and the teacher, her mother’s sister, said, ‘And now the game: What Did You See?’ Most of the children had played the game since they were tiny; but some had not, and they were pitied by the ones that had, for they did not notice much and were often silent when the others said, ‘I saw . . .’, whatever it was. Mara was at first upset that this game played with so many at once was simpler, more babyish, than when she was with her parents. It was like going right back to the earliest stages of the game: ‘What did you see?’ ‘I saw a bird.’ ‘What kind of a bird?’ ‘It was black and white and had a yellow beak.’ ‘What shape of beak? Why do you think the beak is shaped like that?’ Then she saw what she was supposed to be understanding: Why did one child see this and the other that? Why did it sometimes need several children to see everything about a stone or a bird or a person?" --Doris Lessing, "Mara and Dann" (Hat tip: http://lesswrong.com/lw/43w/rationality_quotes_february_2011/3gdr http://lesswrong.com/lw/43w/rationality_quotes_february_2011...)
- mynameishere 13y agoBut then, if children were born smart, because they have smart parents, it would follow that more, and more complex, conversations would ensue. Just pointing out the obvious. Establishing causation would require some pretty grievous, and expensive, social intervention. "Stolen generations" or similar would be the accusation decades after the inevitable failure of such policies. But keep dreaming, Slate.
- ianb 13y agoI am disappointed when I hear the term "socio-economic factors" in discussions of education. First, as if "economic" wasn't enough you add in "socio" to create a term that means "factors coming from every part of a person's life". Of course there are socio-economic factors. But I dislike it particularly because often it feels like a statement: we don't know what the causes are (which is why we make the weakest possible claim by using this incredibly expansive category), and we aren't going to try to find out. So I particularly appreciate this program, and the research it is based upon. We have a pretty well identified phenomena: talking a lot to kids, at a young age, helps them. A lot. And some people talk to their kids a lot more than other people. We should delight in this finding! We have a pretty clear way to identify a lot of kids whose lives could be greatly improved through changes in their parents' behavior, and that change is widely accessible. It's this kind of finding that penetrates "socio-economic factors" and in the process identifies something actionable.
- ballard 13y agoSome of the best hackers &| hustlers I know come from average to slightly-below average backgrounds. The biggest challenge for anyone, given any background, is what they tell themselves they can't do. In addition to talking, it's important that the parent is a decent human-being. An awful person interacting with a kid probably does more harm than good. I don't think there's much correlation with decency and socioeconomics. -- "Give me guys that are poor, smart, and hungry and no feelings." - Gordon Gekko
- Kudzu_Bob 13y agoWhen you say that some of the best hacker and hustlers that you know come from unimpressive backgrounds, does "some" mean "most" or "a few" or "hardly any"?
- electrograv 13y agoSaying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment", if I understand the claim correctly. While I'm sure talking to ones children contributes in a massively positive way to their IQ, I think it's extremely inaccurate and ignorant to the existence of real-world outliers to claim that it's the only factor. To provide just one example (out of many, I'm sure): I was born into a very poor (far below poverty level) working class family that was extremely techno-phobic. Despite being actively discouraged almost throughout my childhood of pursuing an intellectual career, I always had an intrinsic motivation and desire to learn and create tech-related things. This ultimately lead to where I am now, as a software engineer (and I'm definitely the only one like this from my family, a clear outlier). To this day I can't come up with a single environmental influence that explains this -- and believe me, I've tried. I don't mean for this example to detract from the positive message of the article -- that talking to children is very beneficial to their cognitive development (obviously) -- but hopefully to demonstrate that it's a lot more complex than just environmental factors.
- aptwebapps 13y agoThis is a useless nitpick. It's not a scientific treatise, it's a public service message to try to change people's behavior. I don't believe for a second that the doctor believes that intelligence has no inherited component whatsoever. She is dealing with a problem in the real world using what tools she has at her disposal. Edit: Responding jamesaguilar's and true_religion's point about the title. Yes, that's true. I had just read the article and the title wasn't in the forefront of my mind. But when you get a title like that, you simply can't know whether it is meant as a bald statement or rather as something to pique the interest (or as link bait, if you aren't feeling charitable). So, if you elect to click the link, read the article to find out!
- true_religion 13y agoPublic service announcements should at the very least not contain false information in their titles.
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
- fiatmoney 13y agoDespite the fact that it may be "well established within academic circles", there is no actual evidence for the contention of the article - even within the article. In particular, for the study they mention, "The full results haven’t been published yet". It's no more than wishful thinking and a convenient hypothesis.
- Kudzu_Bob 13y agoI guess poor children hear fewer words because they don't watch much television.
- sandGorgon 13y agoactually this is a question that I had - could mediums like television, or a tablet app make up for the parents not talking ? Or does it need for the child to speak back ?
- DanBC 13y agoConversation needs to be interactive and needs to respond to what the child is saying. You need to repeat what the infant is saying. This is to let the infant know that you've heard them, and understood what they said. It's also to model correct pronunciation without criticising. And you then spin off the conversation to thinking and imagination and play. "Look! A fire emiGGen!!" "Yes! It's a fire engine! What do you think they're doing?" (The 'sing song' voice we use to speak to young children feels silly. But apparently it's important.) Television and tablets have their place, I guess. Some of the CBeebies content (Children's tv from the BBC) is good. And children need some empty relaxing time.
- aestra 13y ago"Screen time" (TV, tablets) has been demonstrated to be harmful to childhood development in children younger than 2. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends ZERO screen time for children younger than two (this includes background TV). Some carefully planned educational programs like Sesame Street have shown to be beneficial in older children. Screen time should be minimized though, as it isn't a replacement for interaction. Does do read the article, it teaches the parent to avoid commands like "put your shoes on" and instead substitute interactive talk like "we are getting ready to go out, what do you need to do to get ready?" That lets the child reply with "shoes" or "coat." It is about interacting with your child.
- jmcphers 13y agoIt's the opposite, actually: poor children watch much more television, because their parents don't have time to spend with them. And it's the words spoken by those parents that matter. It has been suggested that television isn't itself harmful, and is only correlated with poor outcomes because it displaces time that would otherwise spent on actual interaction.
- jpeg_hero 13y agoSerious question HN: I often see parents have an almost instinctual need to feed their children bad information and see if the can detect the falsehoods. Is this instrumental in teaching "savvy" ?
- positr0n 13y agoI do this to my son because small children (<3) are such amazing mimics that it's hard to tell if they truly understand a concept without testing positive and negative responses. I could make my 2.5yo kid seem like a genius to strangers by asking the right questions. As a trivial example, I know he usually says "yes" when asked a question he doesn't really understand.
- jlgreco 13y agoI do this with other people who aren't kids, though I try to keep it to family and close friends so that I don't thrash my reputation too much. Typically I'll pick a theme (say, "citrus fruit, and related topics") for a particular family get-together and see how many semi-plausible but invented facts revolving around that theme I can inject into conversations. Sometimes I'm rewarded by hearing facts that I made up regurgitated years later (one that I am proud of is that orange juice turns an opaque white when pasteurized, and needs to be dyed back to orange (like margarine) for sale.) Fundamentally I think this is an exercise in creativity; sort of like telling a good campfire story of your own creation. So far as people play this game with kids, I suspect it is because kids are easier to fool so the game is more rewarding.
- DanBC 13y agoNo, that's horrible. There are better ways of teaching children that people lie, and that information is not always accurate. Besides, people don't always know that they're passing on bad information, so you'd have the situation where someone is passing on stuff that is wrong but saying "no! this isn't part of the game! this stuff is really real!"
- dinkumthinkum 13y agoSo many articles about who's smart, why are they smart, blah blah blah. I just wonder if it is just narcissism or its inadequacy or what ... but on some level, if you think you are smart, then just get on with and do "smart things" and if you think you're not "smart enough," get on it with anyway ... pining away about whether Khan Academy can make you the next Einstein or whether you need to be Einstein to understand it is pointless ... Sure we need some people to research education and so forth but I feel like we have that covered by now. :)
- eulerphi 13y agoAny discussion around smartness reminds me of the Big Bang Theory. If one needs to discuss their intellect, well they probably don't have much.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoSolid parenting advice, #1 talk to your children even when they cannot talk, #2 read new books to your children every week. You can always re-read favorites but just keep the new books coming. And then combine #1 and #2 and talk to your children about the books you read. There is an excellent Radiolab podcast on "Colors" [1] which has (for me) the fairly stunning revelation that you can't see a color you can't name. It starts by looking at the colors used in ancient texts and works its way forward. Some women have more cones than normal and are tetrachromatic so they can see more colors than the normal trichromatic human. But until you name the new colors apparently you can't see them (or recognize them). People seem to need words to organize their thoughts and reason about things they see or read. The more words you give them, the better able they are to reason. [1] http://www.radiolab.org/story/211119-colors/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/211119-colors/
- lutusp 13y ago> There is an excellent Radiolab podcast on "Colors" [1] which has (for me) the fairly stunning revelation that you can't see a color you can't name. [emphasis added] Interesting idea, but untestable, therefore unscientific. Do you see why? A color we can't name isn't open to systematic investigation. If we try to get around this by asking a subject to compare the "unseen" color to a color patch, we're only given the "unseeable" color a name by proxy. This kind of claim is very commonly made by people who don't understand science. > People seem to need words to organize their thoughts and reason about things they see or read. This argues that animals lacking language also lack the ability to think. Copious evidence disproves this idea. Video of a raven using tools to achieve a purpose: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41Z6Mvjd9w0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41Z6Mvjd9w0 > The more words you give them, the better able they are to reason. The better able to reason with words. This is self-referential in the extreme.
- lstamour 13y agoI'd suggest that it's not so much any colour is "unseeable" as it is "indistinguishable" for some or most people compared to similar colours. And since our perception of colour is relative to different contexts, that makes the research even harder to account for. That all said, an "unseeable" colour to my mind really refers to how if you put two very, very similar colours together, only some people can tell them apart, and perhaps more often once they've learned to recognize the difference? No idea how close I am to the mark, as I haven't listened to any of this or read much source material. But I would compare it to colourblindness -- just because in a certain context someone can't tell red from green doesn't mean it can't be objectively, absolutely measured as such. Which is to say, just because you can't perceive it yourself doesn't mean it can't be studied: either the perception (false or true) or the absolute measurements of reality.
- ck2 13y agoChildren are amazing mimics. If you interact with them in clever and intelligent ways, they seem to end up thinking similarly. If you act reserved, prejudice and racist around them, sadly they also learn to mimic that as well.
- r0h1n 13y agoFather of a 3.5 year old brought up using tons of "targeted talking" here: our son has a vocabulary and logical comprehension skills that are significantly beyond his peer group. As a result I'd noticed in the past that he prefers engaging with other adults in conversation over kids his age. Yesterday was his first PTA meeting and the feedback from his teacher seemed to confirm it too. She narrated an incident when the class was being told about rocket firecracker that light Indian skies during the Diwali festival and our son was explaining to her why a rocket goes up ("it burns gunpowder"), or why it stops after a while ("the gunpowder runs out") and then why it falls back to earth ("gravity"). The rest of his class was more fascinated with the talk about firecrackers. Her nuanced point was that our son tends to get ahead of ideas and actions by engaging in a to-and-fro conversation about the logic/explanation behind them, thus at times preventing him from enjoying or taking in the idea or action itself or talking with other kids his age. One of her suggestions was to "explain less" and let our son figure out things on his own (easier said than done, because he's extremely inquisitive and persistent). The larger point I'm trying to make is that high vocabulary can also act as a barrier in kids engaging with others their age. The article also hints at it, in a manner: > Newell is proud that her daughter can spell her first and last names, recite her address and phone number, recognize and spell colors, and count to 200. She’s also frustrated that more of Alona’s peers can’t do the same.
- acchow 13y agoFascinating. "Daddy? Why does the firecracker go up?" "That's a very interesting question! Why don't we try to find out. Let's remove individual parts of the firecracker one at a time and find out what makes it go!"
- bdamm 13y agoRight, being too far ahead of the curve can become an emotional handicap all its own. Too bad we can't put kids like that together in the same schools.
- r0h1n 13y agoI'm not sure whether you meant that sarcastically. If you did, I'm not at all a supporter of segregated schooling of any kind, be it class, 'abilities' or even neighbourhoods. There's value in kids growing up in a heterogeneous and diverse environment, and my comment was only meant to highlight how having an advanced vocabulary can sometimes hinder that.
- RustyTrombone 13y agoSlate running an article on the heritability of intelligence is just about as unbiased as a pamphlet on economics put out by Bolsheviks.
- SloughFeg 13y agoBelieving everyone is tabula rasa when it comes to intelligence is one of those white lies society tells itself to make itself feel better. Of course the environment one grows up in is important but this article is kidding itself into thinking it is the primary factor. We inherit so many other traits from our parents, why should intelligence be any different? What makes it so special that it requires a convoluted explanation that rests on so many assumptions?
- bayesianhorse 13y agoWhy should it be different from other traits? Well, we don't really understand the genetics of physical height. Why should we be so certain we understand the genetics of intelligence when we barely even understand intelligence itself? What do we know? Getting Malaria in childhood reduces IQ by a few points. Resistance to Malaria is partly genetic. Are these genetic factors now a genetic basis for Intelligence? Shouldn't we just vaccinate the children and eliminate the problem? We know that in developing countries, every month in school increases IQ and earning potential. Should we assume and accept genetic factors in school attendance as inevitable or should we just require attendance? We know that in Africa, using cheap deworming agents in school children two times a year will increase their intelligence and school attendance. Are there genetic factors in resistance against worms? Does it matter where the particular ethnicity lives? Sure. Should we care? Not really. The image that emerges is: Once you hold the environment pretty constant, as has been done in twin studies (regarding to the above known factors at least), IQ is largely genetic. But making decisions on the basis of assumptions about the genetic basis intelligence is at the very least quite stupid.
- samstave 13y agoI have (3) children. I had heard this statement before they were born. I have made a oncerted effort to verbally engage my kids all the time. I have some smart kids. I believe this very much. I have a 9yo 2yo and a newborn. Both my 9 and 2yo are very smart, however, there is an important piece to this that needs comment: Teaching your children attention discipline. I have been using computers daily since 3rd grade. I am 38 years old. I have chronic ADHD. It is important to engage your kids conversationally from the time they are born, but to also ensure they can sit and focus. WIth my older daughter, this was accomplished by requiring reading sessions and zero screen time daily.
- schoper 13y agoExcept for deaf children, who seem to fall along the same IQ distribution as hearing children. And rich children seem to inherit their parents IQs instead of their Guatemalan nannies' IQs. But feel free to go on believing that genes don't do anything. God just must have created everyone equal.
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- atmosx 13y agoI'm not sure how you can do this kind of social research and be absolutely sure about the results you'll find, apart from taking a sample, measuring and trying to concatenate one fact with the other. What nobody knows is the exact weight of this factor in the unknown equation which governs human intelligence. Hence from a scientific point of view: "Those who assume hypotheses as first principles of their speculations […] may indeed form an ingenious romance, but a romance it will still be." - Roger Cotes. Excerpt from the preface to Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, second edition, 1713.
- x0054 13y agoI agree with the article but the title on HN is terrible, and needs to be changed. The article says that talking with, and reading to, your kids improves their verbal skills and makes them able to better process information. Who could argue with that? My mom would read to me all the time when I was younger. She would read to me books she liked, classic scifi and such. I enjoyed them very much, even though they weren't written for kids. She would talk about the stories with me and explain some things I did not get. I think that helped quite a bit with my language skills. However, that's in noway negates the fact that some kids are simply smarter genetically then others. Paying attention to your kid and talking with them would greatly increase their abilities, but all kids aren't borne equal, and I don't think the article makes that argument, unlike the title. It should be changed to "Talking to kids greatly increases their cognitive abilities." I think having kids be exposed to several other languages as soon as they are borne, and reading to them books you personally like and find interesting helps them immensely (obviously filter out explicit content, old classics are usually good). It's also important not to dumb things down for kids. Basically Teletubbies = bad, family friendly comedy in a foreign language = good. In a side note I also find it infuriating how economists always make an argument that women should go back into the workforce after having kids, because its good for the family and for the economy. But what about the kid. I don't want to single out women, but I think either the mother or the father should take at least 5 years off, after the birth of their child, to raise their child, instead of hiring a nanny. I understand that it's not fair to always ask the women to do it, but some one in the family should. It's not always an option, but more often then not its the children of the wealthy that you see being raised by nannies. Ok, that's getting off topic.
- ckuehne 13y agoNone of the results in this article warrants the conclusion in the title. The fact that "children from affluent families were starting to speak after implant surgery, those from low-income families lagged behind." can simply be explained by genetics. I.e., affluent parents tend to have affluent children, even if those children are raised by other parents [1, 2]. All the cited study does is measure how much the vocabulary of the _caregivers_ increased due to linguistic feedback methods. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture [2] E.g., http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21425893 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21425893
- Theodores 13y agoI think this article is about much more than nature vs. nurture and it doesn't deserve to be trolled that way. We can learn a lot about ourselves, language and how we learn from understanding a bit about those born deaf. It really is a big deal and Oliver Sacks gets to the heart of the matter in his excellent book 'Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf': http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0330523643/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0330523643/ A highly recommended read for anyone on HN... The article also mentions nannies. A problem they have that the parents aren't ever made aware of is what happens when the child uses big meaningful words for the first time. The nanny wants the parents to be the first to hear these words rather than merely report back to the parents that said big meaningful words have been said. So praise cannot always be given by a nanny when praise is deserved. Although the article says that quality conversation is important, the metric seems to be quantity of words. After a certain developmental stage I am not sure how helpful quantity actually is. There are plenty of adults that I have met over the years that can babble on and babble on. If you are actually trying to concentrate on something then having a constant babbler around is just so not what you need. I consider myself to be a bit of a rambler but not a constant babbler. However, I cannot engage with a toddler in the way a constant babbler can. I go quiet on the two year old whereas the babbler does not. Further down the line I think that the dinner table offers an amazing opportunity for children to improve their vocabulary, engage in conversation, learn when to listen and when to talk. This is particularly the case when parents have adult guests and allow young children to be on the same table eating the same food. Here the nurture comes from extended family and friends. I feel slightly sorry for friends that did not get this during their formative years, even if they did have more time in restaurants (which are posh and grown up).
- cateye 13y agoThe never ending nature versus nurture debate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture
- Ras_ 13y agoI've seen many similarities with the group of friends I grew up with. Did we grow up and become more like each other or was our similarity (temperament, values) something that brought us together in the first place? For example I was the first in our father's side of family to go into higher ed, but everyone in my group of pre-18 school friends ended up there. Many other groups in our school were characterized by other things like marrying young or seeking traditional blue collar jobs. At least there was plenty of time for conversations to mold our thoughts. Parents might actually account for less than friends.
- rsheridan6 13y agoI would think little kids today don't get talked to as much as they did in the past because many or most have single mothers with jobs and few or no siblings, whereas the baby boomers had a dad and a stay at home mom and lots of siblings. And they had nothing to do but talk to each other, since you couldn't spend all day staring at screens then. If this is correct, developments in the last several decades should have been a cognitive disaster. Afaik they weren't.
- cdf 13y agoInteresting tidbit: The Chinese phrase for smart, "聪明" quite literally means "clear hearing".
- jug6ernaut 13y agoThis may have already been mentioned, but (at least in my opinion) its not as much about conversation as it is about stimuli. Stimulating children's brains through conversation && || other means is what allows/makes/(stimulates) the brain to grow and learn.
- ogig 13y agoI feel something is wrong about this article. In it early language is depicted as a fundamental block of building intelligence. I also think that's true, so i find shocking that a cochlear implant is presented as a first step to enable this in deaf children. Signs language is the tool they should be using and writting about. Childrens can comunicate earlier than they can make proper sounds (talk). By teaching sign language early to deaf AND hearing kid, you have a complex language they can use earlier than spoken languages. Check this video of a 2 years old having an engaged conversation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o8Z2lzS764 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o8Z2lzS764 My wife is an experienced sign language interpreter and I lost hearing of one ear so we both are in contact with deaf people. We are actively teaching our hearing 8 months old daugther signs. I can already notice how she stares at me when moving my hands around, but this is probably a first time dad thing ;) On the other hand, cochlear implants create a low definition channel compared to sign language, it's created later, and the surgery it's not easy. I've met plenty of deaf people with they implants permanently turned off. The electrical impulses generated by the implant are a minimal fraction of what a normal ear does. It's still a very rudimentary tech. I'm not saying parents should not implant their deafs kids. I wouldn't, but if they choose to they shouldn't private the child of early sign language because of it.
- known 13y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Is_Father_to_the_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Is_Father_to_the_Man
- bnolsen 13y agoIt also helps to have an engaged and decedt dad around. As a generalization, moms tend to be more protective and dads tend to be more "come on and grow up already". Children need to be treated like they are real people and encouraged to make good, responsible decisions of their own accord, not just be ordered around like they are troublesome objects. That means parents need to be responsible stewards of their children.
- hosh 13y agoTalking to kids like an adult -- what a concept! I'm glad this article came out, and getting this method more in the mainstream.
- thehme 13y agoThis is a wonderful article and I am glad that Slate published it. Wouldn't it be great if there were more people like Dr. Suskind working in all sectors of our world?! Her research and findings are definitely something I have seen firsthand, but I am glad to learn that we have research now that proves my observations. In fact, I believe that people who work for an hourly wage and who work long hours to make ends meet, do not have the time/energy to cook for their families. Instead, with their low income, they look to find easy and quick ways to feed themselves and their families, sometimes resorting to fast food, if not always. In turn, the children in these families grow up thinking this is the way things are done and never learn to cook for themselves. All they have been taught is to eat what comes out of a can or box, instead of preparing themselves and egg and toast. Consequently you have generation after generation not learning to cook, to eat fast food, and this, to me, is the reason why we have been steadily becoming the most obese and disease plagued people in the world. I hope that soon there will be solid research to show that my observation is correct, but more importantly that like developing good language skills, being healthy is something attainable by even those in low income households through simple discipline.
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- goggles99 13y agoThis claim can be dis-proven by common sense. Lets look at families with more kids. Each kid should be smarter and smarter because the other kids talk and converse. Kids who go to day care with other older, talking kids should be brilliant. I am sure that there are many other no-brainier situations when kids hear more words and have more conversations and are not smarter as well. Why do these big scientific articles like this always seem so trivially flawed and ridiculous? Is is just me?
- abdulhaq 13y ago30 million words fewer in 3 years?? That's 27397 words per day... at 12 waking hours per day for a child it's about 38 words per minute - I find it hard to believe.
- RachelF 13y agoMe too. There's some big mistake in their data here.
- stephenbez 13y agoI was curious too. To get a back of the envelope calculation on how fast people talk I watched a talk show and counted how many words they said in 1 minute. It was 103, so it seems possible.
- waldrews 13y ago“Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius”. - Gibbon
- tsotha 13y agoAnybody who's seen a family with more than one child knows environment isn't the primary determinant of intelligence. I know the blank slate theory is comfortable from a political standpoint, but to quote Orwell, "You have to be an intellectual to believe such nonsense. No ordinary man could be such a fool."
- aaron695 13y agoI think things from the study like this are probably more relevant. "In addition to a lack of exposure to these 30 million words, the words a child from a low-income family has typically mastered are often negative directives, meaning words of discouragement. The ratios of encouraging versus discouraging feedback found within the study, when extrapolated, evidences that by age four, the average child from a family on welfare will hear 125,000 more words of discouragement than encouragement. When compared to the 560,000 more words of praise as opposed to discouragement that a child from a high-income family will receive, this disparity is extraordinarily vast."
- jgalt212 13y agoCan some please find out what Billy Ray Valentine thinks about the nature vs nurture debate? Hold up! Hey, who's been putting out their Kools on my floor?
- gaoshan 13y agoPersonally I suspect that children are born with varying levels of intelligence (yes, some people are born less intelligent than others) and that the sort of nurturing one provides has a strong effect on how that intelligence develops. I suspect that nurturing can make up a lot of ground but that we do not all start from an even playing field.
- becauseICan 13y agoAlternatively: Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by breathing air.