Growing up poor can impair kids' prefrontal cortex activity -- but it can be restored with games
A paper in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience describes a study that concludes that poor children aged 9 and 10 are likely to have lowered brain activity, comparable to a stroke victim. The researchers say that it's due to growing up in a stressful, "resource poor" environment, with "fewer books, less reading, fewer games, fewer visits to museums." However, the effects can be remediated through playing stimulating games.
"When paying attention to the triangles, the prefrontal cortex helps you process the visual stimuli better. And the prefrontal cortex is even more involved in detecting novelty, like the unexpected photographs," he said. But in both cases, "the low socioeconomic kids were not detecting or processing the visual stimuli as well. They were not getting that extra boost from the prefrontal cortex."Poor Children's Brain Activity Resembles That Of Stroke Victims, EEG Shows"These kids have no neural damage, no prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol, no neurological damage," Kishiyama said. "Yet, the prefrontal cortex is not functioning as efficiently as it should be. This difference may manifest itself in problem solving and school performance."
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What's curious here is why there's no drive from the kids or anyone in their environment to engage in game playing or other stimulatory behavior. Hell, a pack of playing cards only costs a couple of bucks, and can provide incredible stimulation for ages. Bridge isn't easy. Newspapers can be had for cheap...particularly the day after...and provide an endless supply of words (with some occasional content worth thinking about) to read.
It would seem that things like this would be enough to kick-start a brain on a thin budget...why don't they occur?
As we respond to this story, we all need to keep in mind that the findings represent statistical trends, not universally applicable rules. What this research study has discovered (or at least the Science Daily article since according to the psychNET database it has not been published yet) is that the variable of socioeconomic status (SES) is a reasonably powerful predictor for frontal lobe functioning. Put another way, if you knew nothing about a 10 year old kid other than their SES and had to guess whether they had below average pre-frontal cortex functioning, you would be right significantly more often than you would be wrong. As they say in the Science Daily article:
"We found that kids are more likely to have a low response if they have low socioeconomic status, though not everyone who is poor has low frontal lobe response."
This study has very important implications, but the data needs to be interpreted responsibly. The powerful social implication here is that, in terms of development, poorness precedes impaired functioning, which then tends to lead to poorness in the future. Because frontal and pre-frontal development are both affected, which are believed to direct self-control and creative problem solving respectively, the effects in a competitive job market can be massive.
It seems to match with our societal common sense that poor kids with an intellectually stimulating life situation and smart, attentive parents will not be disadvantaged. If the variable of stimulating activity (like games) really does reverse the effects of low SES on pre-frontal development that says a lot about the cause-effect relationship at play here. What we really need is a study testing the interaction effects between the variables of SES and stimulating play. It would seem that we will find that rich, unstimulated kids will show similar pre-frontal deficiencies to the kids in this study, and that poor but stimulated kids will not. Of course, they also present stress as a variable that might impede development, so that would have to be controlled for in the experiment as well.
Although anecdotes have little meaning in discussions of statistical trends, I will add mine to the pile just for kicks. I'm just a poor boy from a poor family, but because of the value my parents placed on intelligence and creative play (Dungeons & Dragons player from age 8), I don't feel at all like I got the short end of the pre-frontal cortex (stick). While there are far too many variables in my particular story to untangle why my being poor did not lead to impaired brain development (as measured in some EEG studies I have participated in), the exception seems to prove the rule here.
I think that the message we should take away from this article is that we have the power to make sure every kid has a well functioning brain through relatively simple public policy measures. Creating special interventions in low-income schools, and educating parents in how they can give their children the best opportunity possible, would be low cost and probably see very good returns 10 years down the road. People need to realize that not everyone is given an equal chance to succeed in our culture, apparently even at the most basic level of cognitive development. More importantly, we need to start acting and legislating in a way that reflects these fundamental inequalities in people's life situations.
@ #2;
There is a drive for people to do these things, that is why we have smart kids coming out of poor families. The key point here is that what you are talking about happens at lower rates in poor families than in rich ones. There are probably a thousand reasons for this, but the main effect probably comes from the fact that the parents themselves suffered from this kind of disadvantaged upbringing. If the parents have impaired pre-frontal lobe functioning, they will be statistically less likely to have the creativity and imagination to foster those traits in their kids. It is a vicious cycle. Also, experimental demonstrations of this effect are just now coming out. We are on the cutting edge of cognitive-developmental neuroscience. Hopefully, once the experiment is repeated a few times and the data confirmed, these sorts of interventions will be worked into public policy.
When my two daughters were growing up, there was never very much money. We ate, we had decent clothes, and the rent and utilities were always covered. However, the ladies were encouraged to read, and read, and read some more. The house rule was if you were not supposed to be doing something else, and you were reading, no one was allowed to bother you. Both girls grew up as voracious readers. They both hustled free rides at college. They are both gainfully employed and not living at home. Oh yeah, I almost forgot . . . we always had at least one PC in the house after 1981 (Timex Sinclair 1000). So they grew up both literate and PC-literate.
Here's the punch line...they both have some money now, but they remember how to live without a lot of money. Growing up low-budget is not a bad thing.
Cicada and Oshkosh, I was about to post the same thing. We were poor as dirt when I was growing up. Like, one time we literally had no food in the house and she sent us to the neighbors' for dinner.
But we went to the library and got into museums for free all the time. My mom scoured the newspaper for free activities to do on weekends and she hustled up scholarships for us, too.
I suppose we were lucky because she grew up in a nice middle class home and poverty was a temporary circumstance. But there is PLENTY of help out there for the asking. Now more than ever.
@#2 It might not just be a problem of a poverty of money but also a poverty of time. A frequent scenario in lower socioeconomic homes is a single parent who works more than one low paying job to make ends meet. In these cases, who is there to teach the kids bridge, or help them read the newspaper? As for why the thoughts don't occur, maybe it's a matter of priority? I mean, if you don't feed your kids for a few days or don't take them to the doctor when they're sick, the bad results are immediate and obvious. If you're struggling to meet your child's basic needs, it's possible you might forget other parts of your child's development.
I think this is a good argument for anyone with a penchant for bridge or dungeons and dragons or libraries and some spare time to volunteer.
I'm just a poor boy from a poor family,
He's just a poor boy from a poor family-
Spare him his life from this monstrosity!
easy come...
Growing up poor, fortunately I had parents who decided to live in a rural setting with lots of land to roam on, gardening and farming to supplement food resources and despite the expenses, as many books and reams of paper as they could afford. No TV.
Interaction with the land, animals and books must be a really stimulating game as I and my siblings were always able to outperform all the twits raised on TV and Pop-Teen culture on the academic scale.
It also involved a two parent family with a mother who spent a lot of time with her children and two parents who taught their children to love reading and educate themselves. The major advantage was that we were taught how to work effectively and tenaciously, a major area that is ruined by parents who decide to overindulge their children because "they shouldn't have it as hard as we did growing up".
Our competition is sloppy minded, impatient, quitters who easily give up when the going gets tough or the returns don't meet their expectations immediately. The don't understand that buckling down, thinking it out, planning, setting goals and grinding your way through the startup will eventually produce results and often better more long-lasting ones than the quickie, overnight cometary success they wanted.
Some lore gained from the whole experience: "Adversity builds character." "When the going gets tough, work smarter and harder." "Don't let education get in the way of your learning." "They can take your things, but they cannot take away your knowledge." "Life is what happens to you while you make plans, however; don't fail to plan for the future.
Growing up resource poor can be a major disadvantage, but if you were born with the right parents, it may not be that great a problem.
I had no idea that boing boing endorsed social Darwinism. I am a relatively new reader and I didn't see this coming. The presentation of this article is not positive or fair. Despite the quality of Berkeleys research, all your report of it here does is spread assumptions.
Its not like you well to do's would let your kids play with low class street kids. You send your well developed kids to expensive private schools not so much for the quality but to ensure that they don't associate with the poor. This article continues a blind tradition of ignoring real class issues by begging science for excuses. Good job guys, you ruined my morning.
This article continues a blind tradition of ignoring real class issues by begging science for excuses. Good job guys, you ruined my morning.
I'm a world-class cynic and I don't see that at all! I see the Boing community pulling together to suggest volunteer time, packs of cards, reasons -why- poor kids don't get the opportunity to engage in the activities more wealthy kids do.
Its not like you well to do's would let your kids play with low class street kids. You send your well developed kids to expensive private schools not so much for the quality but to ensure that they don't associate with the poor.
Very few of us here are that well to do. And even fewer of us would discriminate against people that harshly. People like that aren't usually much a part of the Happy Mutant fold.
We're not like that. Don't judge us- or Cory- this early in your readership- based on a single article, nothing more than a blurb, in which Cory himself said nothing about poor kids being inferior, just understimulated, and the whole community gave reasons for that and reasons to change.
And, amusingly enough, anecdotes about how poor a lot of us were growing up.
Don't sour your experience with us based on this, please. Some impressions can come off wrong, and I feel that's what happened for you here.
sorry,
i already feel better
woke up and got excited.
The quick and peaceful response i have received to my outburst is testiment to the good standing of this community.
I feel that diversity and compassion are the simple solutions to the above problems. Most of the worlds problems are caused by people who say, "Umm.. we were just sitting down for dinner, could you come back in like and hour."
I resent any suggestion that we should eat the poor.
They must be made to fight in the arena for our entertainment first.
This research is the best argument for the need for arts education in our schools and after school programs I think I've ever seen. What better way to provide visual stimulus and dramatic play?
Anyone know where I can find a list of all 50 state superintendents of education to send this to?
#15- it's well known and proven that arts education (as well as physical education, and a second language when younger) improves test scores in all areas for those who get it. Somehow this is lost on north american education boards, but I digress.
One thing this helps point out is another layer of the vicious cycle of poverty. A decent chunk of the poor seem stupid and unmotivated, which would help explain why they're poor. Apparently the poverty is a factor in the stupidity/ lack of motivation. It means that welfare money isn't near as important as finding ways to improve that mental stimulus, and putting money into that.
I grew up poor, but was extremely happy and always found something interesting in my world and it didn't include museums, music, video games or any of these "things" that are often touted as being "better" for children.
In fact I had an older sibling who was so obsessed with providing "enrichment" to my life, that there are some cultural institutions in NYC that I can't come near/go-to without feeling small pangs of panic attacks.
And FWIW, I was giving a computer for my bar mitzvah by said sibling and while I loved mainly playing video games on it, it instantly changed my perceived social status in my neighborhood so much that I actually lost some old friends, gained new ones and was exposed to a mentality of elitism and related judgment I never had before.
So when I read this stuff, it makes me a tad sick. What I've learned over the years is homes with parents that are loving, pragmatic & honest can enrich your life more than anything. And stuff like that takes very little time at all if you even doit in small doses throughout the day.
I think there's a whole industry built around parents insecurities about building their children into perfect people. And while a lot of what's said looks good on paper, most of it is B.S.
Isn't it possible that these are traits passed on from their parents?
I would assume that generally the smarter you are the more money you make?
Has nobody noticed that illiteracy has skyrocketed in some industrialized countries like the US. Functionally illiterate parents aren't going to tell their children to zip down to the library and pick up Jane Austen because none of them can even read a newspaper headline. Add that to the large number of poor parents who don't speak the dominant language in their country of residence and that throws a pretty wet blanket on some of these 'I grew up poor' stories. For every family of Waltons, there's also a family of Clampetts.
Well, Antinous, I guess it's all over with for Western Civilization then. ;^)
The US is 45th in life expectancy. That's a pretty big hint that something is horribly wrong.
Isn't it possible that these are traits passed on from their parents?
I would assume that generally the smarter you are the more money you make?
The last three bosses I had were close to millionaires, yet they couldn't write a short memo without making several grammar/spelling mistakes (us employees would often have to brainstorm to figure out what they meant). They had people around them to figure the hard stuff out for them and two out of three had inherited the already successful business from their fathers (the other had made big money when lucking out on a land lot bought at a bargain that suddenly became prime).
So from my experience, having money doesn't necessarily means your are smarter. In a lot of cases, it means you had more opportunities.
Brains aren't that valued in our society: Money and connections are.
That could also explain the growing illiteracy rate Antinous was mentioning. You can live life and even be successful without knowing how to read or write. Literacy is not a huge priority. How much money you have (regardless of how legitimately you've made it or how it was handed down to you) and who you hang out with is more important and admired, in most people's opinion.
Here's a horrifying article about where our education dollars are going in Southern California. The LA School District Superintendent gets a $45K annual expense account plus a $3K monthly housing allowance on top of his $300K annual salary. No wonder our kids can't read.
@ #17
Nikola Tesla: Died broke.
Leonardo Da Vinci: Never a rich man.
Machiavelli: Scraped by.
Dante: Lower middle class.
Most of the gifted and brilliant educators in the US: Get paid peanuts.
Marketplace and societal value placed on a job determine salary to a far greater degree than the intelligence required to perform the job. While there may be a small correlation between income level and intelligence, it is most likely because of problems like the ones discussed in the article and not because smart people tend to be richer. Remember: intelligence is a multi-faceted cluster of inter-related traits, so specific forms of intelligence will be better suited to accruing money in a given society than others.
@Sekino
Thus the saying, "Success isn't based on what you know, but rather who you know."
Pvt. Foley couldn't read or write anything but a few simple words and his name. He was, however, at eighteen the checkers champion of his Tennessee hollow. I taught him how chess was played. It took him three games to beat me. Regiment had a chess club, mostly officers; and the Colonel, who had captained his West Point team, was the best of them all.
It took Pvt.Foley two draws before he beat him.
@ Gollux
I didn't know that saying, but is it ever appropriate.
Hey, I was poor growing up. We used the library. My parents played games with us. We did chores as a family. Poor kids do not have to grow up in a "resource poor" environment.
Hobby horse on
I think part of the problem is "babies raising babies." Meaning not necessarily children having children but immature people trying (or not really trying) to raise kids.
/Hobby horse off
-Carrie
#18 "For every family of Waltons, there's also a family of Clampetts."
That made me laugh.
#21 "Brains aren't that valued in our society: Money and connections are."
I was having this whole conversation with a co-worker, about education. My position is sometimes personality makes up for a lack of education. Being a natural salesperson, or able to manipulate people can lead to great success. Sheer industriousness or persistence, too. Lots of real-life examples of this.
Buddy: you knew Andrew Jackson (Slipstick) Libby?
I would assume that generally the smarter you are the more money you make?
Very untrue, especially for folks who aren't white men and get discriminated against in the job market.
Of course, even among white men, it's not really generally true. I'd recommend reading this article if you have the time (it's a rebuttal to another article, which you have to read to understand the piece I've linked to).
@Flexiblefire
Hey, I've had a few kneejerk responses here that made me feel downright horrible. It happens! ;) Good ta'meetcha.
I would assume that generally the smarter you are the more money you make?
There's a break point, probably around a 140 IQ, where people make less money the smarter they are. Of the possible things on which you can focus your intellect, making money is fairly boring.
"Of the possible things on which you can focus your intellect, making money is fairly boring."
Pfui-- it's got to be fascinating compared to playing the piano. I mean, all you do there is just whack on keys all day long. Plonk plonk plonk without end.
Or art. Smear the paint on the canvas, repeat. Keep chipping flecks off the marble over and over and over, to say nothing of the final takes-forever polishing.
Or money-making, like anything else complicated, is going to be joyful for the skilled practitioner.
Antinous @ 32 - Ha! There's my excuse! One of my very best friends went through all the official Mensa controlled tests and came out at 162. She's a yoga teacher/therapist now. You know the implications of that. :)
Back on topic though, poor kids = poor parents, and for a lot of poor parents, never mind the physical privations, the social stigma of being poor +/or on benefits can lead to chronic depression, which in turn doesn't lend itself to imaginative or stimulating parenting.
At some point the universe is just a cloud of glittering motes and it's all good.
What I don't understand the relevance of is the income statement made by this research. Wouldn't it be ten times more accurate to say:
"children who have fewer books, less reading, fewer games, fewer visits to museums..." have lowered prefrontal cortex activity?
They probably used responses to income levels as a differentiating factor, Delta. It's a lot easier to calculate for that than to ask parents if they're providing few books, games, and intellectual stimulation to their children.
did they do a control group with stupid, spoiled rich kids that have had everything handed to them and done for them?
Don't diss my people. We have feelings too.
@ Takuan
Hey, you're taking a potshot at my Boss's children! No fair. Unfortunately, he brought them up country club snob. They're pretty high maintenance and just aren't taking too well to the current belt tightening economy. He also cannot understand why they're unwilling to step into his shoes to take over the business. Sad really, at one time they had a lot of potential.
did you know Lazarus Long has been hanging around here under the name of "Buddy66"?
“Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.â€
Sounds like that's a tricky balance-- making the kid's life "hard" enough that he learns how to think, but not making it so hard that his brain starts reacting to chronic stress.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=dgWrVIPAzJo
FlexibleFire, Tenn, you guys just made my week. Thank you.
It's a dead dried-up cliche to say that poverty is numbing. Let's try to temporarily revive that observation.
There's a difference between being the child of one or two smart, engaged parents who happen to be poor or are living a voluntarily cash-poor lifestyle, and being the child of someone who's unwillingly poor because they have poor job skills or language skills, or because they have physical, emotional, and/or generational problems, chemical dependencies, or that nonspecific adult syndrome, Failure To Cope.
A lot of marginalized people live in marginalized spaces -- frontage roads, Edge City trailer parks, beat-down apartment buildings in semi-industrial neighborhoods, cheap housing developments miles from nowhere that have no public spaces and never developed a retail district, et cetera. Everything is inconvenient. Transit is meagre to nonexistent. Schools aren't good. There's no neighborhood life.
Living in poverty leaves a household prone to disasters and emergencies, which can eat up a lot of the available energy.
Kids may have no reliable access to libraries, or no parental support for library visits. Reading may not be a habit they pick up from their parents. Also, remember that libraries were in general much better funded when we were children. Many of them now have curtailed hours, and are shut on evenings and weekends, or are only open on certain days.
If the parent or parents are sufficiently overworked and/or beaten-down and depressed, they may simply have no time or energy to interact with their kids. They won't teach them card games or monitor their homework. They won't show them how to garden, or help them with the hard digging, or keep tools around. There'll be no workshop space in the basement, no sewing machine and fabric stash in the closet. Art supplies will run out and not be renewed. The parents may not socialize, or if they do it may not involve their children, so there won't be other adults around to learn from.
Kids can be living emotionally and intellectually stunted lives in the midst of potential riches. Access is as important as money, but the beginning of access is knowing that it's there.
Lazarus Long? I think he's one of my descendants. We'll just have to wait and see.
Buddy66, are you writing an autobiography?
We are a one income family, I am a stay-at-home-dad, and we are broke. Many people I know are relatively poor, but we all get together to facilitate our kids relationships, we have our own little school co-op, we go camping, meet at the parks to play and walk, and all of us are avid readers. We have a nice little library across the street from my wife's office, and almost every gift we buy for the children we know is a book. We raid the library book sales, and most of the people we know can be found at the consignment shops.
What this boils down to is do the parents understand what it takes to raise a child and are they able to make the time to do whatever they can to enrich their child's life. Books can be bought for a quarter.
Here is a perfect example of what we are really talking about when we say children of poor families are disadvantaged. A heavy smoker at my wife's office, once explained how sad she was because they couldn't afford to buy the kids Christmas presents. Need I say more?
RE funding libraries. The public library where I work, in a school district in which half the kids live below the poverty level, is cutting its hours by one day a week next year (possibly with more cuts to come.)
And I live in the comparatively wealthy side of the district, where many retired people live and where many of the homes are vacation homes. In the town where the schools (and most of the kids)are, the library is a quarter the size of mine and is only open 24 hours a week.
There is no excuse for this -- even with a recession on (especially with a recession on) libraries should be a widely available resource, not a place to squeeze out a few more dollars that make practically no difference to anyone except those who use the library.
And I'm not complaining because I'm working less -- my hours haven't changed.
@ Theresa
Well, I can see your point. I guess I was lucky to have a dirt poor backwoods father who decided that being stuck in the city starving, or in a trailer park on the edges starving was a greater evil that being out in the country starving in the midst of greater opportunity. He also had the good sense to marry a Michigan farm girl who wasn't afraid of work before he left the city environment. All I know is that there was a lot of hard work involved in that luck.
"Buddy66, are you writing an autobiography?"
No need to. Takuan implies that Heinlein wrote one for me.
Long before "It Takes A Village," like-minded bohemian enclaves made their own parenting communities. My kids and I lived in a couple. Books, music, play, schooling; most of it outside of the greater, organized community. Villages within cities. Get 'er done, friend.
Prefrontal Lobes = Planning for the future. Pretty interesting and explains the difference between the Waltons and the Clampetts. If you want to be somone else, just change your mind.
To tie in with the study, if you aren't raised seeing you have a future, your prefrontal lobes won't develop which impairs your ability to plan for the future.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html
Enjoy
Who funded the study? That's what I want to know. Probably video-game money behind it somewhere!
People are deluded if they think there's an electronic fix for problems like this.
@48- That raises an interesting point for me-- you're interested in thinking and having a rich, full mental life for yourself and your children. What if you weren't? If intellectual activity had absolutely no appeal to you, and you couldn't imagine why such activity would be appealing.
Of course, that leads to problem two-- if the kid would be prone to disagree with the parent if given a chance...
Cicada, if given a chance...
Yes, indeed, and that is the parental requirement, give them a chance, support their interests. In our group there is one kid who is developing completely normally, but doesn't seem to have much intellectual curiosity. He isn't dumb, he just likes to play, and he plays rough. He can play Spiderman and super heroes all day, so his mom buys him costumes, which he will change hourly. He actually writes and draws better than most kids his age, and loves storytime at the co-op, so maybe one day he'll be a comic book artist.
Anyway, we always buy books for presents, knowing he also loves dinosaurs, I asked his mom if he would like a dinosaur book for his birthday. She said, not unless it will fight and eat the other books.