27 July 06 - 19:36Intelligence and Heredity - NY Times Article

A very interesting piece in the N.Y Times about recent research into heredity and its effect on IQ. In “Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children,” the University of Kansas psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley find that by the time they are 4 years old, children growing up in poor families have typically heard a total of 32 million fewer spoken words than those whose parents are professionals. That language gap translates directly into stunted academic trajectories..

Regardless of whether the adopting families were rich or poor, children whose biological parents were well-off had I.Q. scores averaging 16 points higher than those from working-class parents. Yet what is really remarkable is how big a difference the adopting families’ backgrounds made all the same. The average I.Q. of children from well-to-do parents who were placed with families from the same social stratum was 119.6. But when such infants were adopted by poor families, their average I.Q. was 107.5 — 12 points lower.

In conclusion- if you want your kids to be bright, stimulate them, talk to them, read to them, play them music, sing engage their thinking process. Do as much as possible to grow their brains, before they are four.

admin - default - two comments / No trackbacks - § ¶