A new study was released today that says if you give poor mothers extra money, their babies have slightly improved brain development. Brendan Nyhan is skeptical:
I really hope this is true but it's one paper, p=.02 with largest outcome added after preregistration, main result uses a post hoc combination of measures, and acknowledged sensitivity of results to differences between groups. Let's wait and see. https://t.co/uOUXLz8VnN
— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) January 24, 2022
OK, sure, but there's already a long literature showing a correlation between poverty and infant brain development, so this paper's result isn't very surprising. You might even wonder why anyone bothered with this particular bit of research.
There are two reasons. First, instead of just measuring poverty it makes use of "giving people money," which is a hot topic in lefty circles these days. Second, and more important, it doesn't use mere survey or test data. It involved hooking up babies to EEG machines and measuring their brainwaves, which is much more sciencey.
This surprised me because I had never heard of it before, but it turns out that we've been hooking up babies to EEGs for a long time and measuring various Greek letters:
Childhood EEG-based brain activity demonstrates a specific developmental pattern....For example, more absolute power in mid- to high- (i.e., alpha, beta, and gamma) frequency bands has been associated with higher language, cognitive, and social-emotional scores, whereas more absolute or relative low-frequency (i.e., theta) power has been associated with the development of behavioral, attention, or learning problems.
This sounds vaguely new-agey, but I guess it's accepted science: beta and gamma are good; alpha is mixed; and theta is bad.¹ Here's a chart from the paper showing what happens to the children of mothers who were given the extra money:
Sure enough, the kids who got the extra money have higher beta and gamma responses. For now, then, let's assume these measurements were correctly done. The key question is whether increased EEG activity in the beta and gamma bands is truly correlated with stronger cognitive development later in life. The entire study hinges on this.
So I took a look. The first problem I ran into is that most of the infant brainwave studies are related to autism research. Apparently peak alpha activity is associated with symptoms of autism, and research into this is ongoing.
That's obviously not germane to poverty, so I had to restrict my search to studies that weren't about autism. There weren't many longitudinal studies that tested kids beyond about two years old, but here's one that went out to seven years old:
Meh. The sample size is tiny; the trendline looks awfully dependent on one outlier kid with an IQ of 140; and there are hardly any kids with an IQ below 100, which suggests this was not a very random sample.
There are other studies that measure a variety of things, but I couldn't find any that measured medium-term life outcomes against infant EEG results. There's a fair amount of evidence that EEG results are correlated with improved cognitive skills at around age two, but not much beyond that.
At least, that's my horseback conclusion. I might have missed some studies. For now, though, I'd advise skepticism until someone does a rigorous longitudinal study, which would obviously take a long time.
In the meantime, it's probably true that poverty is associated with poor brain development. This new study doesn't offer much that's new on that score.
¹The reason this surprised me is that apparently EEG studies of infants have been going on for a long time, but we nonetheless haven't been inundated with sketchy books about "how to improve your baby's gamma waves" or Dr. Oz segments about dietary supplements that will depress alpha waves. Where are the cranks and crackpots in all this?
Being a crank/crackpot is hard work. You have to focus on the low-hanging fruit.
The cranks are too busy doing James Bond cosplay in preparation for a Joe Rogan Podcast appearance to notice this news.
There isn't a modestly priced gadget for measuring brain waves. There's no reason one can't be hacked up in the near future. The electronics has been there for a while. All we need are some just barely good enough sensors. Then we'll see the baby brain wave, and probably grown up brain wave, cranks coming out of the wood work.
I have no opinion on brainwaves, but I do think "poverty" vs "giving people money" could measure importantly different facts: to the extent poverty is correlated with anything else that could affect development, "giving people money" gets at the part of the equation that "giving them money" can solve.
For example, I would expect "lower English-language proficiency" in children whose parents' first language is not English, and I'd expect higher levels of poverty as well--but I would not expect money to make up all the difference. The more the difference is "money" rather than "other stuff", the more tractable the problem.
Everything is better with money.
Money is the key. Just trying to prove it, since so many higher income people prefer to think that they hit a triple when they were born on third base, and why can't everyone hit a triple. Studies of adverse childhood experiences (ACES) also show changes in brain development, and poverty, neglect, other negative experiences are considered ACES. Money can reduce a lot of the strain in families.
“Everybody needs money. That’s why they call it money “
Mickey Bergman (Danny DeVito) The Heist
The interior lives of Walker Bragman & Meagan Good say otherwise.
I just realized, I always call Meagan Day & Virgil Texas Meagan Good & Virgil Good, which is both proactive interference memorically but also somehow an insult to a good Black actress & surprisingly so a bad GQP congressman.
Looks like the study was done at Lake Woebegone--where all children (except 2?) are above average.
Some people look at an R^2 of 0.11 and say this correlation accounts for 11% of the effect. I say, what fit???
Oz and the crackpots will be out soon enough.
Is this saying the offspring of the very wealthy would be all expected to be in the 1%, brainwise?
Surely this could be tested for.
Don’t people say “If you’re so smart, how come you’re not rich”?
So if you’re rich, you must be smart. Right?
Big John Trump, Harvard physicist energy.
What am I missing -- why are the two sets shown the the graph in perfect opposite synchronicity?
differences from the average?
"Sure enough, the kids who got the extra money have higher beta and gamma responses."
They must be faking it for the extra money.
Isn't IQ supposed to be disparaged?
Want to improve your babies brain waves?
Talk to your baby, sing to your baby, read to your baby, play with your baby, hold your baby and dance with it, walk though the house with it pointing stuff out and saying what it is (singing what it is,) go outside and do all the above.
Repeat.
What? Too busy making and stretching money to have that time? That may be why giving parents money would help.
Well, don't forget food. Nutritious stuff not watered-down formula to make it last longer, or snacks, the only things available at the corner mom&pop shop, which is all the family has to shop at, because they don't live in "the 'burbs".
That is an excellent point.
My kid was in an EEG study involving autism when a baby.
Of course you get a skewed group participating. First you have to respond to the postcard in the mail, and the people excited to put their kids in a research study are not exactly a cross section of the population. Then you have to have the flexibility to take a baby to a university on a random weekday. Most studies pay hardly anything for your time.
SciFi and now brain waves.....
hmmmm.....
Have you seen "Saturn 3" with Farrah Fawcett??? (no, not a sequel)
I’d rather provide poor pregnant women with free abortions.
& to think people like our glibertarian housetroll Justin love that talking point about Demokkkrat racist lesbians like Margaret Sanger being white supremacist eugenics absolutists.
Sounds like Justin dropped the veil.
I’m sure I’ve never used Margaret Sanger in a sentence before this one.
Mandatory?
No. Just cracking wise.
The obvious next question to me is - are there studies that link where a kid is at on cognitive abilities at age 2 with how well they develop later in life/longitudinally?
Because if so, I have no problem drawing the line from "alleviating poverty for infants leads to better cognitive development by age 2" to (whatever better cognitive development at age 2 is associated with later in life, which I assume is a bunch of positive things). To ignore that next step would be kinda silly, no?
I would speculate that there are already some studies, probably more robust, on the issue of nutrition and physical child development, which shows better nutrition equals better development. I don't think this is even debated.
If that speculation is correct, there is no reason not to assume that the developing brain is not otherwise positively affected.
This is an interesting line of reasoning though, because its kind of like the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.
A big chunk of modern liberal theory rests on the assumption that the "poor" (just choosing that word, as opposed to any minority or other underprivileged group), can be just as successful, just as healthy, and basically do just as well as any other group in society with appropriate societal support to make up for any lack of family support.
And while that broad statement is also really (to me) not only obvious but morally worthy, the problem is that if one admits that the "poor" end up with children who have sub-par brain development -- I mean, WHOAAAAA THERE!
This is why I am in favor of class based socialism. This works in Europe because there is a consensus on the belief that a person isn't responsible for the class they are born into or just plain happen to be in. Europe is free of the ridiculous American assumption that the only reason someone is poor is that they are obviously lazy.
Europe is also free of the assumption that, say, a brown person is only poor because we all know brown people are dumber than non brown people. That's where this type of study, for me, gets unfortunately close to supporting a morally disgusting position.
Can't you hear f-ing Ben Shapiro on this if its true that there are a bunch of studies that poor people simply aren't as smart, and that their poorness has nothing to do with systemic racism? Ugh.
That's a lot of conclusion to hang on a graph comparing two slopes with R^2 = 0.11 & 0.29
Scientists don't believe that their studies prove everything, so why pretend here that they do?
What would Kevin suggest we all do? Disbelieve that there is any connection at all between brain development and poverty and stop giving people extra money to improve their lives? I'm not sure what the point is of discouraging research like this in the face of the difficulty of knowing anything with a great deal of certainty.
If you want stronger effect sizes, perhaps you shouldn't go into research. But if scientists stop doing research where does that leave us -- do we all just make stuff up? Is that better than sussing out trends from noisy data?
I am not a fan of nihilism for its own sake, so that one can sound knowledgeable about our lack of knowledge.