EEGs show brain differences between poor and rich kids

[_live_each_day_]

www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/12/02_cortex.shtml

"Kids from lower socioeconomic levels show brain physiology patterns similar to someone who actually had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult," said Robert Knight, director of the institute and a UC Berkeley professor of psychology. "We found that kids are more likely to have a low

Comments

[ferahgo]

For the sake of discussion, I gotta throw this out there. Is there any possible chance that, on average, the naturally less intelligent people are more likely to be lower class, and the naturally more intelligent people in the upper class? It is certainly true that on average people with higher IQs make more money.

The conclusions that article draws about cause and effect are pure conjecture. For some reason it's completely taboo to question this, but I'm not convinced without seeing more data that points towards the causative effects the researchers are "conjecturing."

[suehypno]

Then how do you explain Paris Hilton? It's not as if the KIDS are making all the money. They're born into the money their parents accumulated (or even inherited). I think this is more a matter of access to better nutrition, healthcare, and education than any sort of genetic predetermination. And some very intelligent folks just aren't good with money or frankly don't care, while some very dim-witted folks make bundles on Wall Street. Look how rich the actors in Hollywood are or our sports figures are, and yet how many of them would you consider intelligent?

[ferahgo]

Stress the on average.

Models and movie stars on the whole seem to often represent an entire group of outliers for this concept. :p

And re: kids

Children are a product of the genetics of their parents.

[saciel]

yeah, and genetics won't funcion after the A+B principle although you possibly learnt that in school.

It is very possible that the kid of two intelligent people may be dumb as bread, even if they have four kids, all of them could be as dumb as bread.

And two not so bright people can make rather intelligent children.

That's just as stupid as the trend of youth security seperating children from their mothers because mom has an IQ (which is an abstract measurement, by the way) below 100.
But fact is, although Mom may be dumber than average, the kid is likely to be normal.

[ragnor144]

I could think of some ways to test the cause / effect of this, but I don't think that there is an ethics panel out there that would let me.

[mokele]

While I do agree that your hypothesis is plausible, I think the differences in the article are more than differences in a few IQ points.

[jirel]

There are kids and people who wind up in the lower social-economic class by other reasons than job. My family did it because my father became totally disabled and couldn't work. I've known others who were that way because the father left the wife with two small kids (no she never had more) and then never sent child support. And that's just two I can think of without even trying.

[iseekreality]

For the sake of argument, doesn't this (albeit a single data point) lend credence to the OP's statement

[jirel]

The problem I see is that just about everyone assumes that if you are a "lower income" family its because you can't keep a job. One of the things that needs to be really changed is people's perception of what causes "lower income" families. I blame the government for this perception. As long as they convince others to believe its the families own fault no one will pay attention to how the government screws them over - like taking up to 36 months to approve disability payments and then only backpaying 6 months when its approved. Ie, the longer they can make you wait the more its worth to them.

[ferahgo]

Of course there are other people who do. That's totally true. All I'm saying is that on average, this may be the case. May or may not be. Actually my real point was that it needs to be tested in more specific ways than the study actually did in order to legitimately draw the particular conjectures that the researchers did.

[furikku]

Having gone to different schools with lower class and higher class individuals, I can conclude that, at least in my experience, that hypothesis does not hold true. In fact, there seemed to be pretty much an equal distribution of "natural" intellect among the richer and the poorer types.