I'll take a stab at this interesting question but without references (my
excuse is that I'm writing from home). First, to quote in entirety the
original post:
On 26 Apr 1997, Laura J Miller wrote:
> The recent _Newsweek_ on children, "Birth to 3", had an
> article about the effects/benefits of stimulation on
> brain development. Their take on it was that "short of
> being raised in isolation, a baby will encounter enough
> stimulation in most households to do the trick". I've
> seen the studies where rodents were raised in enriched (EE)
> and nonenriched (NE) environments where they found that the EE
> brains have many more synapses etc. Of course,
> the experiment utilized two extremes (deprived vs enriched), which
> I guess contributed to the conclusion in the article (though
> the article didn't go into the differences in the brain or
> anything as technical-most of the "experts" were psychologists),
> but everything I've learned about plasticity and brain
> development says that stimulation generates synaptic connections
> and general brain growth. I don't see how they can make their
> conclusion.
>> So, what is the feeling in the neuroscience community? Did anyone
> else see this article? Is an "adequate" level of stimulation
> all that is necessary for maximal brain development during the
> early years? I have trouble believing that brain development
> has such limited potential. I think they used extremes such as
> references to trying to develop an Einstein to make the concept
> of stimulation seem excessive, instead of helping parents learn
> how to best stimulate (though, still, their point was that nothing
> extra is really necessary if they are not in a vacuum).
>> Some more of what the article said:
> "Does any of this [back and white toys, Mozart CDs etc] really make a
> difference? Can you stimulate your child into becoming another Einstein?
> Not likely. All of this obsessive parenting is based on the notion that a
> baby properly stimulated will develop faster, learn languages or music
> better
> and all in all be a smarter kid."
>> " There's no evidence that specific kinds of toys or environments will
> somehow speed up skills or groom a child for the Olympics. 'You could
> stimulate until the cow comes home and it's not going to make any
> difference," says David Henry Feldman, a developmental psychologist
> at Tufts University. 'Evolution has made sure that the baby's brain
> is going to develop certain neural pathways.'"
>> "Researchers also caution parents against expecting that they can make
> their kids smarter. 'The fact is, it's very very hard to raise anybody's
> IQ,' says Edward Zigler, a Yale psychologist and a founder of Head Start."
>
I'd pretty much agree with this point of view, although as a psychologist
who may be an "expert" but not an expert, I guess my view has already been
discounted. However, as an involved parent, I'd like to think that all the
enriching experiences my wife and I provided (extra attention to nutrition
during pregnancy, lottsa reading-to, lottsa books, lottsa "good" toys,
educational TV, exposure to two languages, teaching them to read and type
at an early age, encouraging questions and inquiry, travel experiences,
encouraging acceleration in school) were effective in whatever success
they've achieved in life (jury still out on that one). However, it's
becoming clear that this may be merely hubris.
For one thing, as a colleague on the list Teaching in Psychology (TIPS),
Tom Allaway at Algoma College, Ontario has recently persuasively argued,
these "enrichment" experiments may be misinterpreted. It can be argued
that the baseline condition is really the enriched condition, which is
closer to the natural environment of rats. These experiments are then
really about the effects of deprivation. Certainly we have enough
observations on deprived children (case of Genie, the profoundly-deprived
California child, and recent observations on Romanian orphanage children,
for example) to confirm the results of these animal studies that
deprivation is not good for the developing organism.
Despite this confirmation, there is always room for caution in
extrapolating from studies on lower animals. If I recall Harlow correctly,
while he found dramatic effects on the behaviour of severely-deprived
monkeys, once he took steps to reduce the emotional reactions in the test
situation, the deprived monkeys showed no cognitive deficits, unlike the
results reported for rats (e.g. in the Hebb-Williams maze).
Finally, the results from the twin studies of Thomas Bouchard (another
psychological "expert", unfortunately) and his colleagues at the
University of Minnesota are starting to have an important influence in
child development. This work on identical twins reared together and apart
is that being raised in different families has surprising little effect on
many developmental outcomes. For some characteristics, such as personality
and social attitudes, there is virtually no difference whether the twins
are reared in the same home or different. The bottom line is that, in
Bouchard's words, most middle-class families provide an environment that
is "plenty good enough" to allow the full expression of the child's
genome. The only exception I can think of is that if a child shows promise
in a particular area (music, mathematics, whatever), it can best be
developed with a parent who takes active steps to provide the necessary
environment and training. But on the whole, I think the evidence is
consistent that as parents we have far less influence than we like think
we do.
As a parent I'm disappointed, and I'd do it the same way anyway. But
despite the hype, the case has yet to be made that the outcome for a child
from a good middle-class family can be enhanced by special kinds of
enrichment.
-Stephen
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470
Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661
Bishop's University e-mail: sblack at ubishops.ca
Lennoxville, Quebec
J1M 1Z7 Bishop's Department of Psychology web page at:
Canada http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy
------------------------------------------------------------------------