PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Children's genetic potentials are subdued by poverty

2011-02-01
(Press-News.org) Children from poorer families do worse in school, are less likely to graduate from high school, and are less likely to go to college. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that these differences appear surprisingly early: by the age of 2. It's not a genetic difference. Instead, something about the poorer children's environment is keeping them from realizing their genetic potentials.

Past research has found that a gap between poor children and children from wealthier families opens up early in life, even before children enter formal education. "Poor kids aren't even doing as well in terms of school readiness—sounding out letters and doing other things that you would expect to be relevant to early learning," says Elliot M. Tucker-Drob of the University of Texas at Austin, lead author of the paper. He and his colleagues, Mijke Rhemtulla and K. Paige Harden of the University of Texas at Austin and Eric Turkheimer and David Fask of the University of Virginia, wanted to look even earlier—to see if they could find these differences in infants.

The researchers used data on about 750 pairs of fraternal and identical twins, from all over the country. The children's mental abilities were tested at 10 months of age and again when they were 2 years old, with tasks like pulling a string to ring a bell, placing three cubes in a cup, matching pictures, and sorting pegs by color. The children's socioeconomic status was determined based on parents' educational attainment, occupations, and family income.

At 10 months of age, children from poor families performed just as well as children from wealthier families. It was over the next 14 months that a gap emerged. By 2 years of age, children from wealthier families were scoring consistently higher than the children from poorer families.

The researchers went on to examine the extent to which genes were involved in the test scores. Among the 2-year-olds from wealthier families, identical twins, who share all of their genes, had much more similar tests scores than fraternal twins, who share only half of their genes, thus indicating that genes were influencing their tests scores. However, among 2-year-olds from poorer families, identical twins scored no more similar to one another than fraternal twins, suggesting that genes were not influencing their test scores. The researchers concluded that something about the poor children's home life was suppressing their potentials for cognitive development.

This study didn't look specifically into why wealthy children improve more. It could be that poorer parents may not have the time or resources to spend playing with their children in stimulating ways. A common goal of education policy is to decrease the achievement gap between poorer and wealthier children, says Tucker-Drob. "And I think the first step to achieving this goal is understanding the basis of these disparities." He's working now on understanding exactly what it is that parents are doing differently—analyzing videos of poorer and wealthier parents interacting with their children, for example, to see if he can find differences.

### For more information about this study, please contact Elliot Tucker-Drob at tuckerdrob@psy.utexas.edu.

The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "Emergence of a Gene × Socioeconomic Status Interaction on Infant Mental Ability Between 10 Months and 2 Years" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Keri Chiodo at 202-293-9300 or kchiodo@psychologicalscience.org.


ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Resolved to quit smoking?

2011-02-01
ANN ARBOR, Mich.--Brain scans showing neural reactions to pro-health messages can predict if you'll keep that resolution to quit smoking more accurately than you yourself can. That's according to a new study forthcoming in Health Psychology, a peer-reviewed journal. "We targeted smokers who were already taking action to quit," says Emily Falk, the lead author of the study and director of the Communication Neuroscience Laboratory at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and Department of Communication Studies. "And we found that neural activity can predict behavior ...

Smart lasers could make cancer biopsies painless, help speed new drugs to market

2011-02-01
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Biopsies in the future may be painless and noninvasive, thanks to smart laser technology being developed at Michigan State University. To test for skin cancer, patients today must endure doctors cutting away a sliver of skin, sending the biopsy to a lab and anxiously awaiting the results. Using laser microscopes that deploy rapid, ultra-short pulses to identify molecules, doctors may soon have the tools to painlessly scan a patient's troublesome mole and review the results on the spot, said Marcos Dantus. The results touting this new molecule-selective ...

Pakistan floods last summer could have been predicted

2011-02-01
WASHINGTON — Five days before intense monsoonal deluges unleashed vast floods across Pakistan last July, computer models at a European weather-forecasting center were giving clear indications that the downpours were imminent. Now, a new scientific study that retrospectively examines the raw data from these computer models, has confirmed that, if the information had been processed, forecasters could have predicted extremely accurate rainfall totals 8-10 days beforehand. The study also finds that the floods themselves could have been predicted if this data, which originated ...

Pitt team grows arteries with most elastic protein reported, big step for living vascular grafts

Pitt team grows arteries with most elastic protein reported, big step for living vascular grafts
2011-02-01
PITTSBURGH—University of Pittsburgh researchers have grown arteries that exhibit the elasticity of natural blood vessels at the highest levels reported, a development that could overcome a major barrier to creating living-tissue replacements for damaged arteries, the team reports in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team used smooth muscle cells from adult baboons to produce the first arteries grown outside the body that contain a substantial amount of the pliant protein elastin, which allows vessels to expand and retract in response to blood flow. ...

Plants can adapt genetically to survive harsh environments

2011-02-01
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A Purdue University scientist has found genetic evidence of how some plants adapt to live in unfavorable conditions, a finding he believes could one day be used to help food crops survive in new or changing environments. David Salt, a professor of horticulture, noticed several years ago that a variant of the research plant Arabidopsis thaliana that could tolerate higher levels of sodium had come from coastal areas. To test the observation, Salt grew more than 300 Arabidopsis thaliana plants from seeds gathered across Europe. The plants were grown ...

New approach needed to prevent major 'systemic failures'

2011-02-01
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A Purdue University researcher is proposing development of a new cross-disciplinary approach for analyzing and preventing systemic failures in complex systems that play a role in calamities ranging from huge power blackouts to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and the subprime mortgage crisis. "The striking similarities in such catastrophes necessitates a broader perspective to better understand such failures," said Venkat Venkatasubramanian, a professor of chemical engineering. "In the history of systemic failures, a few disasters have served as ...

Aging safely at home? California's disabled elderly are barely holding on

2011-02-01
The network of public services that supports California's low-income, disabled elderly is fragile, affecting the ability of these vulnerable residents to live independent lives in their own homes, according to a new study from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. This policy note reports the first findings from a yearlong effort to follow the lives and challenges encountered by several dozen representative older Californians in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Santa Clara who are enrolled in Medicare and Medi-Cal and who receive in-home and community ...

Road may disrupt migration, ruin Serengeti, study finds

2011-02-01
Building a highway through Serengeti National Park may devastate one of the world's last large-scale herd migrations and the region's ecosystem, according to new research by an international team of ecologists, including a University of Guelph professor. The study by John Fryxell, a Guelph integrative biology professor, and four other scientists from the United States and Canada appears in a recent issue of PLoS ONE, a peer-reviewed international journal published by the Public Library of Science. The researchers studied the effects of a proposal by the Tanzanian government ...

Tonsillectomy linked to excess weight gain in kids

2011-02-01
Alexandria, VA — Tonsillectomy is the most common major surgical procedure performed in children. Children who undergo the surgical removal of their tonsils (tonsillectomy), with or without the removal of their adenoids (adenoidectomy), are at increased risk for becoming overweight after surgery, according to new research published in the February 2011 issue of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery. Pediatric obesity has increased overwhelmingly over the last 20 years, with recent data suggesting that as many as 33 percent of American children are overweight and 17 ...

Repeat MRI screening for breast cancer results in fewer false positives

2011-02-01
OAK BROOK, Ill. – MRI screening for breast cancer delivers consistent rates of cancer detection and fewer false-positive results over time, according to a new study published online and in the April print edition of Radiology. While MRI can be more effective than mammography at identifying suspicious areas of the breast, it is not always able to distinguish between cancerous and benign lesions, which can result in additional testing and false-positive results that may cause anxiety for patients. A screening exam is considered to be false positive when its results recommend ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Rugged Falklands landscape was once a lush rainforest

Dizziness in older adults is linked to higher risk of future falls

Triptans more effective than newer, more expensive migraine drugs

Iron given through the vein corrects iron deficiency anaemia in pregnant women faster and better than iron taken by mouth

The Lancet Neurology: Air pollution, high temperatures, and metabolic risk factors driving global increases in stroke, with latest figures estimating 12 million cases and over 7 million deaths from st

Incidence of neuroleptic malignant syndrome during antipsychotic treatment in children and youth

Levels of protection from different cycle helmets revealed by new ratings

Pupils with SEND continue to fall behind their peers

Half of heavier drinkers say calorie labels on alcohol would lead to a change in their drinking habits

Study first to link operating room design to shorter surgery

New study uncovers therapeutic inertia in the treatment of women with multiple sclerosis

Cancer Cooperative Group leaders propose a re-engineering of the nation’s correlative science program for cancer

Nawaz named ASME Fellow

U2opia signs license to commercialize anomaly-detection technology for cybersecurity

Explaining dramatic planetwide changes after world’s last ‘Snowball Earth’ event

Cleveland Clinic study is first to show success in treating rare blood disorder

Bone marrow cancer drug shows success in treatment of rare blood disorder

Clinical trial successfully repurposes cancer drug for hereditary bleeding disorder

UVA Engineering professor awarded $1.6M EPA grant to reduce PFAS accumulation in crops

UVA professor receives OpenAI grant to inform next-generation AI systems

New website helps researchers overcome peer reviewers’ preference for animal experiments

Can the MIND diet lower the risk of memory problems later in life?

Some diabetes drugs tied to lower risk of dementia, Parkinson’s disease

Propagated corals reveal increased resistance to bleaching across the Caribbean during the fatal heatwave of 2023

South African rock art possibly inspired by long-extinct species

Even marine animals in untouched habitats are at risk from human impacts

Hexagonal electrohydraulic modules shape-shift into versatile robots

Flexible circuits made with silk and graphene on the horizon

Scott Emr and Wesley Sundquist awarded 2024 Horwitz Prize for discovering the ESCRT pathway

Versatile knee exo for safer lifting

[Press-News.org] Children's genetic potentials are subdued by poverty