Got you! haha... just kidding ;)
This story is a bit less controversial than the whole Bell Curve thing ;)
According to a EurekaAlert press release,
Although intelligence is generally thought to play a key role in children's early academic achievement, aspects of children's self-regulation abilities--including the ability to alternately shift and focus attention and to inhibit impulsive responding--are uniquely related to early academic success and account for greater variation in early academic progress than do measures of intelligence. Therefore, in order to help children from low-income families succeed in school, early school-age programs may need to include curricula designed specifically to promote children's self-regulation skills as a means of enhancing their early academic progress.
What do you guys think of this?
Comments
Why does the paper associate this deficit in attentional regulation with being low-income? Is there empirical evidence for that? The press release concludes:
"For some children, however, particularly children from low-income homes or facing early adversity, self-regulation abilities may be slow in developing, leading to problems in the transition to school and increased risk for early school failure."
It's presumably valuable that they've found a more specific factor than "IQ", but there are lots of questions about this they don't seem to know yet. Most critically: Nature or nurture? And how much can kids catch up and learn these skills if they (for whichever reason) fall behind their peers?
Posted by: Harlan | March 26, 2007 9:27 AM
'Self-regulation'? This sounds like trying to make little boys behave like little girls. If kids in school are restless, it means they're bored, not defective.
Posted by: Roy | March 26, 2007 9:51 AM
They are talking about kindergarteners and pre-schoolers (3 to 5 year olds). It is scarcely surprising that for that age group impulse control and task switching control (which they are just learning) swamp comparatively small intelligence differences in learning reading and math.
Also consider that education is done by 'age cohort', but that the oldest '3 year old' at the end of the school year is 25% older than the youngest '3 year old' (this is like the difference between a 12 years and a 15 year old!). I don't really see how to disentangle that 'age skew' effect on a cross-sectional study because you are teaching 'the same thing' to children at significantly different 'mental ages'.
Hopefully they ran the study longitudinally. Their summary doesn't say.
Posted by: Benjamin Franz | March 26, 2007 10:05 AM
Harlan:
I think there has been a lot of research into the relationship between low-income children and various factors that lead to success (or lack thereof) academically. This lit review summarizes a lot of said research: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2004.00676.x
Roy:
I don't think that's what the authors are advocating. Perhaps you are reading into a bit based on personal experiences. Self-regulation would mean that even though you are bored, you can control yourself enough not to lose focus or become a disruption. That said, a lot parents to overuse terms like, "ADD" or "Hyperactive," where if placed side-by-side with actual sufferers of these conditions their little hellions would appear to be angels.
Posted by: Mitch Harden | March 26, 2007 10:43 AM
Well if self restraint is like a muscle that gets tired (http://www.globalrichlist.com/index.php ), it's easy to imagine that poverty associated stressors can tire out children's self restraint muscle. Just interchange self restraint with self regulation and these two studies seem to complement one another rather well.
Posted by: Brandon Field | March 26, 2007 11:31 AM
I could see this working. If we say that self-regulation translates into a capacity for making sound, rational, decisions rather than ones based purely on emotion then I feel I've seen some great examples.
It seems to me that low income and poor decision-making often go together. If those skills are learned from one's parents and community, and particularly considering the relative disconnectedness of modern neighbourhoods, then the resource for learning those skills becomes parents who may not have been able to make the best choices for themselves.
But I feel that age makes no difference. We all know people who can't resist impulse at any level. Maybe they just never picked up that skill set? And like anything else I'd expect the impacts to be more sharply felt and noticeable at lower income levels.
Not being a scientist myself, I apologize if I've got the wrong end of the stick on this, but it gibes with the lessons I've taken from experience.
Posted by: Metro | March 26, 2007 5:41 PM
This press release sounds like just another way of saying 'kids from low-income environments should be screened for lead poisoning'. Well, duh...
Posted by: ClinkShrink | March 26, 2007 9:39 PM