Strollerderby : intelligence

Mozart Makes Babies Smarter and Other Medical Myths

Amy Kuras — Wed, 27 May 2009 21:36:00 GMT

We’ve all heard them – those medical myths that we all believe, even though we don’t have any basis for them.

This article in USA Today examines some of those myths, plus has a nifty little quiz that I scored so badly on, it appears my children are lucky to be alive.

Here’s one fact I really like: That larger-headed babies are smarter. I clicked no, but it turns out? They do in fact score higher on intelligence tests. I should have known, because my daughter has an enormous head and is also clearly a supergenius.

Here are some other ones – there’s no clinical evidence that sugar makes kids any more hyper (these researchers clearly have not seen my kids after a birthday party or visit to the grandparents’), and teething doesn’t cause a fever. And playing Mozart for babies does not make them smarter — sorry, all you suckers who fell for the belly headphones. That belief comes from a study that was done on college students, the effect only lasted fifteen minutes and it’s never been able to be replicated.

And of course for many of these myths, they come courtesy of the pediatrician. Many of the long held beliefs about what you should and shouldn’t do have never been clinically tested in any sort of rigorous study, so doctors fall back on what their mentors told them whether it’s true or not.

Basically, if you question something the doctor is telling you (or your aunt or best friend or coworker, for that matter) it’s okay to ask them where they got their data. Or, do what I do – smile, thank them, and ignore.

Unlocking The Baby Brain

Amy Kuras — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:01:00 GMT

When you look at a newborn baby, what do you think is behind those sweet little unfocused eyes?

For a long time, scientists thought “nothing much.” In fact, until the 1970s doctors would perform surgery on infants without anesthesia (!!) thinking that they were so unconscious they could not feel pain. As it turns out, the infant brain is a lot more active than previously thought.

Jonah Lehrer wrote an article for the Boston Globe a week or so back called “Inside the Baby Brain” that examines this question, and it’s absolutely fascinating (Lehrer is a really good science writer for the layperson, I think). It talks about how babies’ brains are more like lanterns, casting a diffuse glow on everything, versus the adult brain which is more like the intense, focused beam of a flashlight.

One example he gives is a study where kids were shown two cards, but asked to remember only the one on the right. The more focused brains of adults and older children could perform the task easily, while the more diffuse brains of young children were more likely to remember the card they were told to ignore.

This is thought to help children learn about the world. As one psychologist Lehrer interviewed said, “….children, it turns out, are much better at picking up on all the extraneous stuff that's going on. . . . And this makes sense: If you don't know how the world works, then how do you know what to focus on? You should try to take everything in.”

Just another way these unique little people we live with are so intriguing.

Sick in the Morning? Your Kids Will Thank You

JeanneSager — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:32:00 GMT

Who knew one day I'd do a happy dance over seven months of throwing up and two trips to the emergency room? According to a new study in the Journal of Pediatrics, moms should be embracing morning sickness - it means we're bound to pop out smarter babies.

Take that Ms. "Oh, I loved pregnancy, I never threw up, never even had an upset tummy."

The study was commissioned to look at the affects - if any - of anti-nausea drugs in pregnancy, and there's good news there too. Scientists found that mothers who took diclectin during their pregnancy to fight their morning sickness were not endangering their kids' mental acuity. That in and of itself is important news for doctors, who find that mothers who are suffering from morning sickness are loathe to take anything for fear of hurting their fetus.

But as Dr. Gideon Koren, director of the Motherisk Program, at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and one of the study's authors, points out, morning sickness can have debilatating affects on a mother. See above - two trips to the ER and seven months of loafing about miserably sick (see also - why I'm only having one child!).

Whether parents took the drugs or not, the researchers found the kids coming out of cranky sick moms were scoring higher on tests of IQ (yes, I know, a very imperfect system) and mental acuity. This goes along with the good news that women who suffer morning sickness are less likely to miscarry and less likely to have babies with cardiovascular problems.

So moms, carry that barf bag proudly. You're baking a little genius in your oven.

Image: growinstyle

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Let Them Chew Gum: It Makes Them Smarter!

JeanneSager — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:04:00 GMT

It's about time I track down my old high school teachers (maybe they're on Facebook) and get them this new information. A study has found kids who chew gum score higher on math tests because "Teachers observed that those who chewed gum seemed to require fewer breaks, sustain attention longer and remain quieter."

Take that Mrs. Peake - who used to hand out detentions to gum chewers in her classroom.

The study out of the Baylor College of Medicine is small - not just in the sample size but in how much of a difference in scores between chewers and non-chewers (the latter had scores that were lower by three percent), but the crux of the findings make a lot of sense.

Much in the way that smokers say they use cigarettes for stress reduction (not advocating for smoking, just saying), a lot of former smokers say chewing gum helped bridge the gap as they weaned themselves off the smokes. Part of that? The rhythmic chewing helped reduced stress. And kids with less stress perform better on tests.

Baylor's scientists say the chewing may also enhance blood flow to the brain, although how that's linked to academic performance (if at all) has not been determined.

So next time your kid gets written up for chewing gum in class, how about sending this blog post in to his teacher as an excuse?

Image: SundayObserver

They Say: Bilingual Babies Learn Better

Kate Tuttle — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:01:00 GMT

And not just languages, either. A new study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, compared babies' ability to both process linguisitic information and to correctly anticipate based on new information, a mental process linked to what neuropsychologists call "executive function." Babies rasied in bilingual households performed better than monolingual babies, although the study's lead scientist suggests that the monolingual babies will eventually catch up with their bilingual peers.

Undertaken at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, the research may change attitudes in Europe, where Jacques Mehler, the study's author, says that "parents are wary of giving a bilingual education to their kids and tryto speak only one language." Given the geographical proximity and relative ease of exposing an Italian child to, say, French, it seems almost criminal not to try.

For parents in the US, bilingual education in the home is fairly well accepted, and even kind of de riguer in certain circles (probably half the kids we play with in our Boston-area setting are bilingual), but there lingers a stigma that privileges certain languages over others. Your mother-in-law will brag to all the neighbors if your baby is learning French, for instance, but that kid down the block who speaks Spanish (as well as English) may well be seen as a potential problem for schools and society for her failure to assimilate. And while some innovative school districts have piloted two-way bilingual programs, many other districts have pushed for English-only learning as a means to help students succeed in English (even though these rules tend to raise dropout rates for immigrants and the children of immigrants).

So it's nice to see some scientific confirmation of what parents who speak two languages in the home already know: a mind is made nimbler the more it's exposed to. When it comes to languages and learning, more is more.

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6-Year-Old Boy has 176 I.Q., Bums out Entire Adult Population

Cole Gamble — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:00:00 GMT

Yeah, so this kid has a 176 I.Q. so what! Can he buy cigarettes and gin?? Ha!

(Author goes on 72-hour bender)

Alright, I’m back. Sorry, had to get that out of my system. Gargled a few dozen times with Listerine, but still can’t get that New Car scent out of my mouth (whomever took advantage of my inebriated state and challenged me to eat 15 car air fresheners, you’ll get your comeuppance).

Where was I? Oh that’s right, super depressed. I mean, this 6-year-old kid has an I.Q. higher than Einstein’s. Name any date back to 2000 and he’ll tell you the day of the week. I, on the other hand, got chicken grease on my tax forms. At age 6, this kid can recite every U.S. president in the order in which they served. At age 6 I ate paste.

Why do I keep finding this every time I open my computer in the morning, more evidence of people and things far more awesome than I? That’s it, Internet, I now officially deem you “The Depression Box.”

And what does little Pranav want to be when he grows up? An astronaut. Good. Go ahead and blast off, Pranav. Go up there and lord your hyper intelligence on interstellar creatures for awhile. I’m going back to eating paste. Or maybe I’ll open my depression box and watch some Hulu.

photo: The Enquirer

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They Say: Poor Kids, Rich Kids Think Differently

JeanneSager — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:54:00 GMT

Imagine that. One set's worrying about where the next meal's coming from; the other's worrying about their next iPod. And experts had to do actual studies to figure out rich kids and poor kids think differently?

It was a small study - just twenty-six kids - out of UC Berkley, but the significance is its focus. Scientists did not look at how well kids were faring on tests, which could have as much to do with a lack of quality education as it does with actual brain function or smarts. Instead they took a group of kids from low-income backgrounds and another of kids from high-income families and measured activity in the brain's prefrontal cortex, the part linked to problem solving.

When they flashed images on the screen, a measurement of the activity in that area was measured on all of the nine- and ten-year-old kids. The kids from lower-income households showed markedly less activity than their rich counterparts. As I said, it's a small study, which means the data is relatively worthless. But it proves there's merit to look at the environmental affects on intelligence, not just on health.

Image/Source: BBC News

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Government Seizes Newborn from Mentally Disabled Mom 22 Hours After Birth

JeanneSager — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:29:00 GMT

I'd like to say it was the unthinkable that happened to Barbara Gamble this week. Canadian authorities seized her sixth child just 22 hours after the little girl, Savannah Nicole Elizabeth, was born. It was just what Gamble and boyfriend Vince Kinney feared would happen.

In the weeks since first sharing their plight with a reporter from the Vancouver Sun, Gamble and Kinney have been the hot topic in Canada. They've become the poster children as much for poverty as for the rights of the disabled. The Canadian government has yet to allow the British Columbia residents to take home one of their children - because Gamble has an IQ that's classified her as "mentally handicapped." She's been quite literally referred to as "too stupid to parent."

She may never be able to take proper care of her children, according to some psychiatrists called in to evaluate her, and officials have said it would cost as much as $6,400 (Canadian) to pay for 10 hours a week of in-home support for Gamble during the first three months of Savannah's life. Gamble lives off government assistance herself, although Kinney (who has an IQ in "normal" range) works as a security guard. Both regularly rack up bills that far exceed the money coming in, and welfare officials have questioned the couple's understanding of their limitations.

Although my initial reaction was to let them take their kid home and just keep a close eye on the situation, a look at a mother in a similiar situation who spoke out in support of Gamble last week gave me a greater appreciation for the government's case. Equating the moms' intelligence to that of a 12-year-old, I realized, leaving a baby with a 12-year-old every day for the rest of his/her life would be grounds for child endangerment or child neglect here in America. A wait-and-see attitude on behalf of the Canadian government in this situation would be tantamount to turning a blind eye to possible child abuse.

Still, I've been holding out hope that before Savannah's birth and subsequent seizure, someone would have pitched in to offer some help for these parents. That someone would step in and work with Gamble to help her understand why having child after child is not the answer. Even a 12-year-old can be taught that in life there are rights and there are privileges. Barbara Gamble has a right to make decisions about her own womb. But parenting is still a privilege. The children she's already delivered are alive - somewhere - they should be the focus of her efforts to be a parent, a chance to show what she can do. Savannah is here now too, and if Gamble wants a chance to be her mom, she needs to put her first.

Image: Vancouver Sun

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They Say: To Teach Teens, You Really Have to Scare Them

JeanneSager — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:57:00 GMT

Think you're smarter than a fifth grader? At the very least, you learn differently. Scientists in the Netherlands have published a study that proves the brain is yet another part of the body that experiences significant changes during the tween years.

Published in the Journal of Neuroscience this month, the study by developmental psychologist Dr Eveline Crone and colleagues from the Leiden Brain and Cognition Lab shows a positive attitude helps younger kids cotton onto concepts. But around 12, the brain starts to develop the ability to learn from mistakes. So being presented with the words, "no, you're wrong," is actually better for teens than a slap on the back. No wonder - it's what they'll be telling their parents for the next eight years.

The study was one of the first to split its subjects into three different age groups rather than the traditional split of "children" and "adults." Kids eight and nine were lumped together, as were kids 11 and 12. The adults represented were aged 18 to 25. The result puts into question the age-old practice of punishing our younger kids for their misdeeds to make them straighten up and fly right and the habit of trying to win our teens' affection back.

Apparently, we've got it backward - so let's start spanking the teenagers! Only kidding (sort of). But while I'm still going to follow through with time outs for my pre-schooler, I have to remember to put even more of an emphasis on congratulating her for each and every job well done. As for those of you with teens, here's permission from brain docs (just as smart as brain surgeons, we'd imagine) to scare 'em straight.

Image: University of Leiden

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Too Dumb to Parent: Part 2

JeanneSager — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:33:00 GMT

It was supposed to add credence to the claims that the Canadian government shouldn't be taking a woman's children just because they've labeled her "too dumb to parent." But the follow-up story in the Vancouver Sun about a woman with five kids and the mental maturity of a "12 to 14 year old" did just the opposite for me.

The government has seized each one of Barbara Gamble's children shortly after she's given birth. Among their reasons? Gamble's intelligence quotient is somewhere between 63 and 71, officially "mildly mentally handi-capped." She told her story to Canadian press earlier this month because she's soon due to deliver her sixth child, and she worries the government will once again step in to snatch the child. I could certainly feel her pain at never being given a chance.

Nikki Ross did. She's 31 and mother to five. She's also got an IQ just below 70. She says she's doing just fine as a mom. I'm not convinced.

A single mom (she's divorced from the father of her four oldest kids), Ross doesn't have a job. Short of babysitting as a teenager, she never has. She lives off of government assistance and financial help from her mother. A volunteer agency lends help as well - paying a counselor who helps Nikki with everything from filing income taxes to devising activities for her non-school-aged kids. Her house is filled with sticker charts so she can keep on course with her day - and sometimes she's gotten off course. She's lost her children on and off, sometimes to the state and other times her mom has stepped in to take care of a grandchild. Her biggest accomplishment of late? Figuring out a bus route so she could take herself to the doctor. She has yet to master a calendar.

I'm not arguing the rights to life of the disabled. But what about the rights of their kids? When a mom will forever be 12 years old in her mind, how can she parent a defiant 16-year-old, help an 18-year-old go off to college? How can she handle a middle-of-the-night emergency with a sick toddler when she's only just figured out how to get herself to a doctor's visit at 31? Ross has her mother to help her, but 27-year-old Barbara Gamble doesn't have that sort of help. What she has is a boyfriend who racks up bills well beyond his salary and no job of her own. What she has is a mind psychologists call immature, distrusting, egocentric and lacking in insight. What she has is the mental maturity of a 12-year-old and a uterus that has housed baby after baby since she was 20 years old.

Most of us would consider parents supporting their 12-year-old getting pregnant to be bordering on child abuse. Allowing a 12-year-old to move out on their own after giving birth is unheard of. So, no, Nikki Ross' story didn't make me feel better about Barbara Gamble walking out of the hospital with the latest child she's given birth to in an attempt to convince the government she can be a parent. It made me wonder who would leave a child alone with a 12-year-old for the rest of his or her life.

Image: Vancouver Sun

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Can a Mom be 'Too Dumb' to Parent?

JeanneSager — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 13:40:00 GMT

Barbara Gamble’s IQ is in the double digits. Officially she’s mentally retarded. But does that make her “too dumb to parent?”

According to the Canadian government, yes, it does. The 27-year-old Vancouver mom has given birth five times, and she’s due any day to deliver a sixth. Her first five children were each seized by child welfare officials shortly after she gave birth, and she’s dreading this labor and delivery most because she fears they’ll be back.

It sounds like any mother’s worst nightmare, but to be fair, at least one of the children was reportedly suffering from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder when she was removed from Gamble’s care. That would mean Gamble drank throughout her pregnancy – to such an extent that her daughter was born with permanent defects.

But was it because she didn’t know any better? Her intelligence quotient is between 63 and 71. That’s classified as “mildly mentally handicapped,” and psychologists who’ve reviewed the case have said Gamble is emotionally immature, egocentric and depressive. They estimate she can learn basic parenting skills but would have difficulty adapting to the constant changes of parenting in every day life.

By looks at a newspaper alone, that would put her on par with half the parents in America. OK, maybe not half, but pretty darn close. There are no tests to pass to become a parent (unless you count hitting the stick just right with the pee), so there are no firm numbers on just how capable any of us are of being Mom and Dad.

I’m not a doctor or a psychologist, so I can’t pretend to know if Barbara Gamble truly has the skills to learn to care for her children. Providing her a chance, the same chance given to anyone who doesn't immediately set off a warning bell for being unable to care for their child, seems only fair.

But if it's clear – the way a crack baby’s mom’s drug addiction clearly makes her unfit or the way a schizophrenic mom’s living on the street and forgetting to feed her son makes her unfit – I say take the kids . . . and run. Or is it better to leave the kids there until something does go wrong?

Source: Vancouver Sun

Image: Vancouver Sun, Ward Perrin

Doris Lessing is cranky, old, fun

Brett Singer — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Sometimes it's nice to point out an article, or in this case a couple of articles, that feature smart women. Especially smart, accomplished women who speak their minds and don't care what anyone thinks.

Doris Lessing, a recent Nobel Prize winning writer, definitely fits the bill. How many people win a Nobel Prize and then say, "If I may be catty, Sweden doesn't have anything else."

Or this gem: "I hear girls saying, 'Oh I'm not going to bring a child into this wicked world,' which means they are going to be pregnant next week."

Both of those quotes are from a recent Time magazine interview she did (link via Gawker). There was also a piece in the Sunday New York Times Magazine where she talked about some other topics, mostly her latest work, "Alfred & Emily". The book is described as two novellas: one where she tells her mother's actual life story, then writes another one in which her mother is depicted "as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I." Something about that idea fascinated me. Sort of a "here's her life, and here's what should have happened had she been born into a better situation."

The new book will probably be her last, because, at 88 years young, she has "run out of energy completely." In the Time article she offers some advice to us younger scribes: "Don't assume you'll have it forever. Use it while you've got it, because it'll go; it's sliding away like water down a plug hole."

Now, she also said this about current conditions of Zimbabwe, where she grew up many years ago when it was known as Southern Rhodesia: "It's ruined. Under the whites it was an extremely efficient country. It could grow absolutely anything. We had railways and post offices and roads and water that worked. You can't just put that back overnight." The Gawker commenters rightly slam her for that, although its possible that there is more to what she said, since Zimbabwe is currently a bit of a mess, what with some countries claiming that Mugabe's Presidency is illegitimate. She was also, according to Gawker, "barred from South African and Rhodesia for denouncing apartheid." I'm not trying to excuse what she said, but I don't think it's in the same league as Imus' "Nappy Headed Ho's" riff.

I freely admit that I've never read a Doris Lessing novel, so I have no idea if she's "worthy" of a Nobel Prize or not. But I always appreciate it when someone says what's on her mind, especially someone who has lived a long time and accomplished a great deal. We get to hear plenty of old men talking, both wise and not-so-wise. So let's give the ladies a shot too.

image: nytimes

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Madeline Holler — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:02:00 GMT

Okay, if you’re so smart: Why is the sky blue. Hmmmmm? Oh, you knew it’s because the wavelength of blue is short and short wavelengths scatter in the sky, while longer ones, such as red, travel through air molecules. Well, I didn’t. But now I do.

And I also now know why zebras have stripes, why the Egyptians built pyramids (instead of rectangles), why people fall in love, and why we never see baby pigeons (not that I was looking).

This is a fun (and enlightening) read. Especially now that my two-year-old has entered the “why” phase. Not that she’s asking anything as sophisticated as “why red lights mean stop,” (though, now I know!).

Still, I feel like we’re going to get from “why you wearing THAT shirt?” to “why do people have eyebrows” pretty soon. And, hey, I’ve got the answers!

What stumpers are your kids asking?

Mozart Ain't Gonna Make Your Baby Smarter--That Ought To Be the Sound of an Industry Dying

Kelly Mills — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 14:24:00 GMT

Did you get one of those "Baby Bach" CDs as a shower gift that you were supposed to play for your fetus and later your newborn to make him or her smarter? Send that crap back. Turns out the whole thing has been one big LIE. Okay, that might be overstating it, but it's a myth, anyway. See, it all started with a study that found college kids did better on this spatial intelligence paper folding test after they listened to Mozart, and then the whole thing snowballed into a CD-video-baby-music-blah-blah industry where we ate that crap up in order to make our children braniacs and give 'em every advantage. Actually, I somehow misheard the whole thing, and thought that baby Mozart was supposed to make your kid richer--so you can imagine I'm doubly disappointed by this. All that damn "Magic Flute" and only pennies to show for it!

Feel free to switch over to a little ACDC, cuz a review of the music-intelligence studies found at most: "The effect is only one and a half IQ points, and it's only confined to this paper-folding task." In other words, you can skip the CDs unless your goal is to raise an origami master. And while I've always been confused by the rise in baby classical music CDs (like, how different are they from the '"adult" versions? Less nudity and swearing?) the researchers actually see a different danger. "'It takes away from other kinds of interaction that might be beneficial for children,' such as playing with them and keeping them engaged via social activity." Which might actually make the kids smarter, though I'm holding out until they tell me it will make 'em richer, too.

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