Cultureplaces

Research spotlights the grim effect of poverty on education By   ALISON GOPNIK May 13, 2015 11:13 a.m. ET 109 COMMENTS A fifth or more of American children grow up in poverty, with the situation worsening since 2000,  according to census data . At the same time, as education researcher Sean Reardon has pointed out, an “income achievement gap” is widening: Low-income children do much worse in school than higher-income children. Since education plays an ever bigger role in how much we earn, a cycle of poverty is trapping more American children. It’s hard to think of a more important project than understanding how this cycle works and trying to end it. Neuroscience can contribute to this project. In a  new study in Psychological Science,  John Gabrieli at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues used imaging techniques to measure the brains of 58 14-year-old public school students. Twenty-three of the children qua...

Does a strategy of opposing traits explain humanity’s success? By ALISON GOPNIK July 16, 2015 11:20 a.m. ET 10 COMMENTS Walk into any preschool classroom and you’ll see that some 4-year-olds are always getting into fights—while others seldom do, no matter the provocation. Even siblings can differ dramatically—remember Cain and Abel. Is it nature or nurture that causes these deep differences in aggression? The new techniques of genomics—mapping an organism’s DNA and analyzing how it works—initially led people to think that we might find a gene for undesirable individual traits like aggression. But from an evolutionary point of view, the very idea that a gene can explain traits that vary so dramatically is paradoxical: If aggression is advantageous, why didn’t the gene for aggression spread more widely? If it’s harmful, why would the gene have survived at all?

Testosterone deserves a special approach. Studies on the impact of this hormone on the aggressive behavior are being carried out for centuries. It is well known that, in animal world, for example in birds, the individuals who have a higher level of testosterone behave more aggressively and they can even attack their brothers; they are more combative, more sexually active and bolder in claiming or searching for food [Müller et al., 2014]. When it comes to human species, the important role of testosterone in forming the aggressive and dominating character, especially in men, has been proved [Mazur, Lamb, 1980; Mazur, Booth, 1998; Archer, 2006]. In one of the studies, it has been found that the level of testosterone in delinquents that have been convicted for crimes that implied unprovoked violence is higher than in those who have been convicted for nonviolent crimes, and this trait is characteristic both for men and women [Kreuz, Rose, 1972; Dabbs et al., 1988]. As regarding...