Althouse: "By age 3, a poor child would have heard 30 million fewer words in his home environment..."

April 10, 2013

"By age 3, a poor child would have heard 30 million fewer words in his home environment..."

"... than a child from a professional family. And the disparity mattered: the greater the number of words children heard from their parents or caregivers before they were 3, the higher their IQ and the better they did in school. TV talk not only didn’t help, it was detrimental."

There are some big correlation/causation problems lurking in there, obviously.

222 comments:

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traditionalguy said...: Speaking of religion and science, a deep study of the history of the Jesuits dealings with Galileo's mathematics and his non-heliocentric conclusions is worth the time.

The Church knew he was right but could not risk the faith of their members being alerted to new facts.

The CO2 scare religion is doing what those Jesuits did. They know its all BS, but so what. It is such a great story for the ignorant good folks clinging to their CO2 is bad myth and their outlawing guns stops violence supernatural faiths.; 4/10/13, 9:39 PM
Illuninati said...: O Ritmo Segundo said:
"We survived previous ice ages, we can survive more. Surviving an artificially Venusian atmosphere, though - I'm not so sure."

The pressure at the surface of venus is 93 bar (93 times our pressure at sea level). How does atmospheric pressure affect temperature? Also the percentage of CO2 on Venus is 96.5%, while CO2 on earth is about .0391%. It will be a while before we catch up with Venus.

Historically human civilization has thrived during warm periods and has struggled during cold periods.

"Science doesn't have to be ethically prescriptive, but it's stupid to refuse consideration of the best science in any matter, including some moral ones, on the basis of un-empiric and anti-empiric traditions alone. Once a certain church can take from and atone for what it's doing to biology in the same way that it had to do regarding astronomy and Galileo, then I'll listen to what it has to say on these matters"

Have you just admitted that there is no scientific basis for morality? What philosophical universal truth do you rely on for morality?

I agree that science can provide us with information which helps us make better decisions within an already established moral frame but it doesn't provide the moral frame.

"Anyway, regarding the supposedly infallible morality of edicts from Rome, you might want to ask the North American Indians and Marrano Jews what they thought of that."

Lets suppose that the Catholic church held a counsel and asked the Conquistadors to act as they did, and asked the rulers of Spain to behave as they did towards the Jews, then we could reliably hold the Catholic church accountable. If there is information to that effect, I'm not acquainted with it. So far as I can tell the people you mentioned were independent agents.

I'm not a Catholic, but my understanding of Catholic theology is that the church is fallible and has made many mistakes. The only doctrines which the church considers authoritative are those which it has arrived at in an ecumenical council council or when the Pope speaks Excathedra.; 4/10/13, 9:44 PM
Alex said...: Illuninati - have you read about the calthrate gun hypothesis?; 4/10/13, 9:51 PM
Rabel said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/10/13, 9:56 PM
Rabel said...: Reading the comments on this post has reduced my IQ by approximaely 7 points.; 4/10/13, 9:57 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Have you just admitted that there is no scientific basis for morality? What philosophical universal truth do you rely on for morality?

No. You've misunderstood my response/objection to your assertion that science cannot inform morality. You have reversed what I said in order to reinforce your own original, erroneous proposition.

As far as philosophical "truths", I'm most interested in rational Lockean liberalism. Seeing as how his understanding of government and society is increasingly embraced by larger numbers of countries every year, I think there's something to that. So as far as claims to universalism go, that should be a strong one.

But I am not closed-minded. I find it generally ill-advised to identify "universal" truths, for the simple reason that I do not possess every pair of eyes and every pair of ears in this universe. So, you could say that empiricism is of equal importance to my interest in rationalism.

The "rulers" and warriors of Spain that you shift blame to were either explicitly religious leaders or acting on the basis of widespread religious belief. So I do not find the tricky and bureaucratic way in which the guy at the top and his minions run their affairs on moral pronouncements - claims of its byzantine relationship to fallibility or the lack thereof notwithstanding - to be convincing.

Traditional, organized religion, like any human institution, may contain grains of accurate moral insight. Or better yet, the "spirit" of conviction and holiness that helps us feel secure in what we take to be our moral insights. But it is a decidedly vaguer institution than science, and that is important to keep in mind when one looks for decent answers on anything in life.; 4/10/13, 10:01 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: Reading the comments on this post has reduced my IQ by approximaely 7 points.

Nothing like demolishing faulty foundations.

Unless you meant Shouting Thomas' comments. Or rather, his poor excuse for them. They could reduce Einstein to a blithering idiot in their irreducible irrationality.; 4/10/13, 10:02 PM
Illuninati said...: Alex said:
"Illuninati - have you read about the calthrate gun hypothesis?"

It is an interesting hypothesis. I'm not sure what the World temperature would need to be to trigger a chain reaction. What we do know from ice cores is that the temperature in our present interglacial has been warmer in the past without triggering a run away chain reaction.; 4/10/13, 10:25 PM
madAsHell said...: Maybe it's the difference between:

"I ax you. Why you gotta be dippin' in my kool-aid"*

and just leaving a cheating heart behind.

*one of the comments before the dipper was thrown through the window at Starbucks in Harlem**.

**eyewitness account; 4/10/13, 10:33 PM
kimsch said...: We never used baby talk either. I'd use a word and then define it for my kids if it was a new word. This resulted in a three-year-old boy stating that his toy was broken, and he must repair it. He's in sixth grade now, and has the vocabulary of a high school graduate (one who can actually read and write at grade level).

When he was in first grade he was so far ahead in reading that he was the only first grader in the school who spent mornings in a second grade classroom for reading. We read to him and had him read to us. By fourth grade, his special time with dad was reading to dad for 20 minutes.

At a recent school board forum a local day care provider said she gets 2, 3, and 4 year olds coming to her that do not know their basic colors, letters, and numbers. I was flabbergasted. What are these parents doing? Even putting them in front of PBS broadcast or Sprout or Nick, Jr. during the day will teach them those basics.

Hubby said it's because they're expecting the government to it for them. The government will feed their kids breakfast and lunch if they qualify, it will provide Head Start and K-12 education. Now there's the free universal pre-school. So why should a parent have to do anything. No wonder that Harris woman from MSNBC was saying, "All your children are belong to us." That's what they're teaching the parents...; 4/10/13, 11:36 PM
Anonymous said...: Oh absolutely. My brother is a lot older than I am and a genius. He would talk to us at night for hours when we were small. It absolutely not only shot our vocabularies through the roof but the level of conceptual thought we were exposed to.; 4/10/13, 11:38 PM
cubanbob said...: "If that's not scientific and reasonable enough for you, then I guess you can always refer me back to why it is you take the Vatican's confusion of genomic identity with personhood as your own (and the GOP's) starting point."

That's neat trick you are proposing. Has the Turing machine been invented yet?; 4/10/13, 11:51 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: These Hollywood fucks need to pay.

Blood or money, their choice.

I learned it by watching them.; 4/11/13, 2:11 AM
Dante said...: Rabel: enjoy your observations.; 4/11/13, 2:58 AM
Illuninati said...: O Ritmo Segundo said:
"No. You've misunderstood my response/objection to your assertion that science cannot inform morality. You have reversed what I said in order to reinforce your own original, erroneous proposition.

As far as philosophical "truths", I'm most interested in rational Lockean liberalism. Seeing as how his understanding of government and society is increasingly embraced by larger numbers of countries every year, I think there's something to that. So as far as claims to universalism go, that should be a strong one"

I believe you missed my point. If science can provide a foundation for morality, then the philosopher, John Locke, would be superfulous. Why should anyone look to Locke if scientific experimentation can provide the answers?

That being said, I agree that John Locke was a very good philosopher. It has been a few years since I read his response to THE LEVIATHION by Thomas Hobbes but I seem to recall that Locke used the Bible extensively.

"The "rulers" and warriors of Spain that you shift blame to were either explicitly religious leaders or acting on the basis of widespread religious belief. So I do not find the tricky and bureaucratic way in which the guy at the top and his minions run their affairs on moral pronouncements - claims of its byzantine relationship to fallibility or the lack thereof notwithstanding - to be convincing."

If you have any information which shows that the rulers of Spain or the Conquistadores were acting on orders from the Vatican, then I'll accept your argument. Otherwise my point stands. The groups you mentioned were independent agents who were also Catholics. The fact that someone is a Catholic does not mean that everything he does can be explained entirely by Catholic theology.; 4/11/13, 4:41 AM
Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...: How unfortunate that some people here seem pathologically incapable of staying even remotely on topic.

The article (and presumably the study on which it's reporting) is full of utter nonsense, such as "and children from professional families heard 2,100 words [per hour]." -- that's one word every 1.7 seconds, people, meaning the idiot parents pretty much never shut up all day long. A child won't learn a whole lot of emotional autonomy that way. Quiet play alone for extended periods is important for toddler development.

Even so they miss the obvious explanation which is that most people who are poor are also not very bright. The heritability of intellect seems to be around 40% so many people who are poor (especially the persistently poor) are to a large degree in that situation because they're not particularly bright in the first place.

Why would you expect that their kids will be drastically different? Or expect that constant prattling at them will somehow make everything okay? Or that spending Trillions over decades will effect any sort of positive change when 76% of federal anti-poverty dollars end up in the hands of bureaucrats and administrators rather than poor people?

The "War on Poverty" is almost 50 years old. Poverty won. But seven of the 20 wealthiest counties in America now surround Washington, DC.; 4/11/13, 7:27 AM
Nichevo said...: Ritmo, you like to play smarty-pants, but I must inform you that:

"Whatever shortcomings any secondary comment regarding a peer-reviewed publication in the popular press may have, the anti-science sentiment that prevails among today's Republican party, and is reinforced all too stridently by our very own host."

is not grammar.

You are too much in love with the sound of your own voice. Read your Orwell, and write more simply and clearly.; 4/11/13, 10:08 AM
Jeff said...: This has recently been discussed on the West Hunter blog. If hearing fewer words as a child makes you stupid, we should expect to see lower IQ in the hearing children of parents who are deaf but have normal intelligence, because deaf parents do not use as many or as varied words with their children.

From the comments at West Hunter I gather that it turns out that hearing children of deaf parents have normal IQ. So this would appear to be much ado about nothing.; 4/11/13, 11:23 AM
Sam L. said...: So obviously we must take every child to a gummint education center where they can be read to all day.; 4/11/13, 11:57 AM
PianoLessons said...: "He who controls the language rules the world" Orwell devotes much of his time writing about ( 1984 and The Politics of the English Language - notably). This aphorism is one of the Alinsky Rules for Radicals. It's attributed to Stalin, Goebell, Hitler and other tyrants.

Some believe that LBJs War on Poverty in the 1960s herded blacks into the plantations of urban projects. Further, the chronic lack of desire in these urban areas to create good schools and kill the drug trafficking suggests - to some - a will to keep a targeted population from learning the power of critical thinking, argument and language skills to keep them silenced.

Vocabulary is complete power. It should be taught again as a stand alone class in K-12 and even college.

Power to the people - I say.; 4/11/13, 12:30 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: I found a couple things interesting with this discussion. One was the adverse selection here - few, if any, commenting here would likely qualify in the bottom half both as to literacy and intelligence. So, no surprise at all those talking about how they were raised in environments that were verbally rich. I too was lucky - all 4 grandparents and 2 parents had college degrees, with my father's parents ending up teaching at the college level. So, no surprise that their 5 boys ended up with top verbal and math SATs, and mostly with graduate degrees. Parents and grandparents used long words and proper English, and, thus, so did we, and, on to the next generation. My fond memory was the summer between 1st and 2nd grade. I was young for my grade and was falling behind in reading. Parents sat with me every day and read, and by the time I went back to school had moved from the bottom to the top of the class in reading. Finally here, remember when my kid was 2 1/2 to 3, and was driving them maybe 45 minutes every day to school. We had real discussions. No baby talk. A lot of singing, of course, but still a lot of intelligent conversation (for that age) Seems to have some good, as they are starting a STEM PhD program this fall.

On the flip side though, another economic law is in effect - that when you subsidize something, you get more of it. So, our society has been subsidizing functionally illiterate high school dropouts and the like to have a lot of children out of wedlock.The girls are taught to start having kids young so that they can get their own checks. Something akin to the blind leading the blind here - the ignorant and stupid raising the ignorant and stupid, but heavily subsidized in this endeavor by our government supposedly for good humanitarian reasons. Which is why progressive social engineering is so dangerous - good intentions triumphing over any concerns about counter-productive results.; 4/11/13, 12:46 PM
Forbes said...: Serious math problem. 30 million words by age 3 is over 27,000 words per day. Really. Who talks that much?; 4/12/13, 4:25 PM