Comments on: My brain is shedding neurons (tell me something I don’t know edition)

By: Margaret

Margaret — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:00:43 +0000

Just a tiny point! The “the first 3 years are the only 3 years where you can have any effect” deal in child development is fairly widely recognized to have been overblown, I think. Different parts of the brain “loose neurons” at different rates & the prefrontal cortex (very important for working memory) is probably not at its most developed & efficient until early adulthood. For some kinds of input and some kinds of skills you are going to have a hard time after 3 years old but that is not the end of the story!

By: Tim Ogden

Tim Ogden — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:16:09 +0000

While I’m reverse-blegging can I also ask for a future post that delves a bit more into the Liberia experiment. What are you and Julian going to be doing to try to shift preferences? What sort of preferences are you trying to correct.

And I presume you’re already familiar with the recent work on the effect of poverty and allostatic load on working memory but just in case: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/03/27/0811910106.full.pdf

By: amanda

amanda — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 08:08:47 +0000

this point comes up a lot in the early childhood research (and advocacy), justifying the need for early intervention. the argument mainly goes that after six, you can still have an impact on someone’s cognitive ability, but it requires more sustained attention and is more expensive. (i can send you a ppt if you are interested. it is not my research tho). naturally, this also comes up in the parenting literature as to why you should stimulate your baby and toddler.

i dont know of any evidence on multitasking, but there seem to be a lot of religious/spiritual professions that it is bad. think about the whole point of meditation; see “the power of now” etc. i skimmed the “now habit” and i think the advice seems plausible (you dont get stuff done if you dont focus and that requires dedicated attention for some time), but of course there are lots of extremely productive people who are very productive and still multitask.

By: Allison

Allison — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:54:41 +0000

I’m not surprised to hear that there’s no evidence that women are better at multitasking, but don’t you think (and we’re veering dangerously into anecdotal evidence, so I apologize) that women are more *likely* to multitask, abilities aside?

I’m thinking about a poster I saw once, which depicts a man and a woman making morning coffee, in different houses. The man puts on the coffee, stands beside the pot until it’s finished, and then pours two cups. The woman puts on coffee, empties the cat litter, takes out the garbage, brings in the mail, packs a lunch, etc., and finishes up in time to pour two cups of coffee.

This is cultural, presumably, related to the second shift and the number of competing priorities that women are juggling.