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Every parent wishes to find the way to make her children bright. While genes may be in play, there is no doubt environmental factors weigh in heavily. So what is best. Certainly not Mozart or Einstein tapes, but quality time with the children should play an important role.
Mario Fiorini and Michael Keane confirm this as they use the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (which includes time-use data) and find which activities during childhood translate into the best outcomes in terms of cognitive and non-cognitive skills. For cognitive skills, time spent on education is not surprisingly the best, especially if it is with the parents. Using television as daycare does not help with cognitive skills, but also does not hurt reading skills. For non-cognitive skills, time allocation does not matter, but behavioral problems can be traced back to the mother's education style. As Fiorini and Keane put it, a style that combines effective (but not harsh) discipline with parental warmth leads to the best non-cognitive outcomes.
PS: What's up with Michael Keane moving to a different country every couple of years?
Mario Fiorini and Michael Keane confirm this as they use the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (which includes time-use data) and find which activities during childhood translate into the best outcomes in terms of cognitive and non-cognitive skills. For cognitive skills, time spent on education is not surprisingly the best, especially if it is with the parents. Using television as daycare does not help with cognitive skills, but also does not hurt reading skills. For non-cognitive skills, time allocation does not matter, but behavioral problems can be traced back to the mother's education style. As Fiorini and Keane put it, a style that combines effective (but not harsh) discipline with parental warmth leads to the best non-cognitive outcomes.
PS: What's up with Michael Keane moving to a different country every couple of years?
7 comments:
Interesting comment re 'behavioral problems can be traced back to the mother's education style'
Is this a genuine finding or gender bias?
Where do you see that quote? I can't find it in the abstract.
How the hell can you write a paper like this without controlling for something that is known to account for 40-80% of cognitive ability?
Interesting. Would you care to let the rest of us know what that thing is?
That thing is likely IQ, which in theory is the component of cognitive ability you are born with. Measuring it properly is a difficult task, though, The measurement error in IQ is very likely correlated with the environment variables used in this study, so I do not think leaving IQ out is that bad.
It would seem odd to use IQ in a regression meant to explain cognitive ability test scores. How about using muscle mass to predict how much weight you can lift?
Interesting post, but i would like to refer to the study undertaken by steven levitt, that there is no possible way to make your children intelligent, it is all in the genes, so there's nothing you can do.
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