
Standing Still Predicts School Success Better Than IQ - curi
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514
======
gojomo
Awful headline.

One of multiple exercises in a 1940s test of 'self-regulation' involved
standing still. Children in 2001 don't obediently stand still as well.
Separately, the article notes (without referencing source) that "good
executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's
IQ".

The custom headline going from 'standing' to 'school success' is tenuous
extrapolation that, if the reporter had put it directly in their article,
would not have survived editing and fact-checking.

Bad headlines waste readers' time and send discussion off in tangential
directions based on skewed understandings.

OTOH, I love the article -- good info on how self-management, in individual
children (or even groups) might be best encouraged, and how toys/things might
be just the wrong thing. (What would that mean for the OLPC?)

~~~
curi
It is not a bad headline, it is an opinionated headline (based on text from
the article). I understand that you disagree with my point of view. Please
understand that I disagree with yours, too. The "tangential direction" you are
complaining about is the reason I posted the article. I would not have posted
it otherwise. You should be glad that people who disagree can still be helpful
each other, rather than complaining that your free ice cream wasn't the
appropriate flavor.

~~~
gojomo
In my experience, people who disagree can best cooperate if they emphasize
accuracy in their statements -- thus quickly finding the areas of agreement
and disagreement.

That you thought the statement "good executive function is a better predictor
of success in school than a child's IQ" was the most important part of the
article is a valid opinion I can respect. That you found the standing-still
experiments an interesting way to measure child self-regulation is also a
valid opinion I respect.

It is the pairing of the two opinions into the unsupported statement "Standing
Still Predicts School Success Better Than IQ", and then the promotion of that
dubious statement to the key position of headline, that I find objectionable.

Alternate approaches I wouldn't have objected to:

* contribute article with original headline, but post a first comment with "I found it interesting that the article suggests ability to stand still for longer may predict executive function, and thus school success, better than IQ."

* contribute article with original headline plus appended pot-stirring question: "Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills (Does standing-still predict success better than IQ?)

Or, if HN were to someday allow a comment-with-submission or subhead-with-
submission, that would be a great place for highlighting an opinionated
takeaway from deep in the article, even though the article's main thrust is
something else.

~~~
curi
The original headline is disagreeable to me. Most of the content of the
article is disagreeable to me. It is not a neutral article. There is no simple
neutral way to post it.

~~~
whacked_new
Actually, by altering the headline to your own taste, you introduced further
distortion, which does not facilitate neutral discussion regarding the article
itself, which is the actual topic, and should be treated with respect as one.
While the article may be biased, introducing further bias does not help the
readers's judgment, so the _best_ headline to post would actually be the
original headline; you let the reader decide whether it is disagreeable to
them or not.

------
ephextom
I've had a bit of insight into this, through some exposure to a program that
attempts to treat ADHD, Aspergers and Dyslexia. The program is based on the
premise that these conditions are caused by an underdeveloped cerebellum, and
provides a program of exercises that are specifically designed to develop this
part of the brain.

One of the tests they do in diagnosis and progress assessment is a basic
"standing still" test, performed on a platform with computer-monitored
sensors, and several of the exercises involve simply standing as still as
possible for a few minutes.

They find that over the 12-24 months the candidate participates in the
program, as their ability to stand still increases, the extent to which they
suffer from these conditions diminishes.

As I'm sure many here would attest, people with ADHD, AS and Dyslexia often
have above-average IQ scores, but struggle with school performance or
endeavors that require similar strengths, like conventional office jobs.

~~~
whacked_new
I have a related story. During a visit to a doctor when I was a kid, the
doctor found me unruly, noisy, and over-active. Being a friend of my parents,
he flatly and frankly told them, and in front of me, that I "cannot sit still"
and suggested they enroll me into a Go classroom, which they promptly did.

After a few months I visited him again, and he said, again in everyone's
presence, that I was "much better." I was actually not yet mature enough to
care or comprehend what it was all about, but I am thankful for having had
those lessons.

I also daresay that the benefits of taking such lessons would have comparable
or perhaps superior effects to these lab-controlled exercises, at least when
there is still uncertainty.

However, as per the article, the goal, I believe, is self regulation, so at
least in my case, the neural changes probably were not focused in the
cerebellum.

~~~
lackbeard
What is a "Go classroom". A place where they teach the boardgame Go?

~~~
whacked_new
Yeah

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pg
From this headline it sounds like this is an article about the lameness of
schools, but actually it's a very interesting article about the importance of
self-discipline.

~~~
curi
The part I put in the headline is what I thought was most interesting.

Most of the rest seemed to consist of saying that lack of obedience in modern
children indicates something is wrong with them. And finding things to blame
this on, like toys.

I don't think the issue was _self_ -discipline because the example of how they
studied it was about whether the children would stand still when someone else
told them to.

~~~
dood
I think you missed the most interesting aspect, not about obedience or toys
specifically, but that attempting to control, regulate and educate children
has severely hampered their ability to control, regulate and educate
themselves.

"Essentially, because children's play is so focused on lessons and leagues,
and because kids' toys increasingly inhibit imaginative play, kids aren't
getting a chance to practice policing themselves. When they have that
opportunity, says Berk, the results are clear: Self-regulation improves."

~~~
whacked_new
It seems rather unfair that you got upmodded so much, and curi's post 2 layers
above got downmodded below 0. curi states a personal opinion, which is valid
as one.

You say curi missed the most interesting aspect -- from your POV (and
obviously shared by others). I disagree with you about what is the most
interesting aspect, but I don't think your point is uninteresting, but neither
would I think you missed the "most interesting aspect." I think the "most
interesting" is merely the useful idea that "developing self-regulation is
beneficial and important."

While there is really nothing wrong about the state of your, and curi's
scores, and how much people agree with either of you, this points system makes
it look like, at a glance, that something was wrong about curi's post, and
yours was, relatively, +18 correct. This is a negative side effect of this
point system, which I don't think most people keep in mind when voting.

~~~
curi
yeah. you might also be interested to look at my thread history to see some of
the other stuff i get downmodded for. a few are: a question about what dates
someone meant, a comment that lotto odds are public knowledge (questioning the
point of the post which asked about what the odds "really" are), a "+1
informative" joke that's at -9 for some reason.

edit: btw this thread wasn't a representative example. disagreeing with pg
increases downmods. if it'd been someone else it might not have happened.

 _and_ i was getting some downmods by people who didn't like the link or title
but who can't downmod the submission itself so downmod comments intead.

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skmurphy
This is a great article. Key paragraphs for me:

It turns out that all that time spent playing make-believe actually helped
children develop a critical cognitive skill called executive function.
Executive function has a number of different elements, but a central one is
the ability to self-regulate. Kids with good self-regulation are able to
control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control
and discipline.

We know that children's capacity for self-regulation has diminished. A recent
study replicated a study of self-regulation first done in the late 1940s, in
which psychological researchers asked kids ages 3, 5 and 7 to do a number of
exercises. One of those exercises included standing perfectly still without
moving. The 3-year-olds couldn't stand still at all, the 5-year-olds could do
it for about three minutes, and the 7-year-olds could stand pretty much as
long as the researchers asked. In 2001, researchers repeated this experiment.
But, psychologist Elena Bodrova at Mid-Continent Research for Education and
Learning says, the results were very different.

"Today's 5-year-olds were acting at the level of 3-year-olds 60 years ago, and
today's 7-year-olds were barely approaching the level of a 5-year-old 60 years
ago," Bodrova explains. "So the results were very sad."

~~~
foonamefoo
I don't see all the mystery: people no longer beat their kids to the extent
that they did 60 years ago. Maybe if they made the request as part of a game
instead of as an order from an adult there would be more validity (but you
can't go back in time to the '40s to make them change the experiment as well).

~~~
skmurphy
I am not sure that's it. I wasn't beaten as a child, nor are my children.
However, I had much much more unstructured play "in the neighborhood" than my
children do. Almost any activity is mediated by adults today. Other parents,
primarily fathers, have remarked on this in the last five to ten years when we
compare how we organized our time when we were between five and fifteen years
old with how our children's time is organized and managed for them. For the
most part we didn't have adult umpires or coaches as children, we had to work
out situations for ourselves. Sometimes a game would break up, but over time
we learned to compromise in ways that seem less common with adult coaches and
adult referees who are often more committed to "winning" than the children
involved. We may be getting off topic for "Hacker News" but unstructured play
seems to be a key component to fostering self-control and creativity is my
take-away.

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nostrademons
So, is it a good thing that I talk to myself when programming? My parents
always look at me a little strangely when I do that. (I suspect that my
coworkers would've done so too, except that many of them also mumble to
themselves while programming.)

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deltapoint
Self regulation and IQ are both important characteristics. It makes sense that
self regulation has a stronger correlation with better school performance than
IQ. School tests one's ability to regulate their time and focus, studying a
paying attention.

I believe that children must mix "raw" play where they can imagine their
surroundings. The good old empty box comes to mind... it can be a race car, a
castle, a rocket ship and so on and so forth.

On the other hand I think the commentary undervalues the importance of
regulated play. The learning of rules will come in handy when one enters
school and the work world where there are many formal rules to follow.

------
yters
The problem is much bigger than merely children's toys. In general, our
society is progressively less imaginative, and merely consuming what we've
inherited from our past. This is why a lot of entertainment is based around
destruction: cutting humor, violent action/horror films, most video games, pop
music (angry rock, gangsta rap).

The hacker community has an advantage here, since we are so used to using our
minds. Games like nethack are entirely dependent upon the user being logical
and having a good imagination.

~~~
curi
In what range of years do you think most of the imagining was done?

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nazgulnarsil
old fashioned play involved mimicing what the children saw in the adult world
on a much simpler level. What do you do when you want to understand something?
You make a simplistic model of it and go from there. Are the children of today
not doing this and thus not building an understanding of the world? Is WoW and
MySpace the same thing?

------
Alex3917
But I was only hungry for one marshmallow...

------
vlad
The headline is a sad mark on our schools...

Especially as they talk about young children, any faults lie with their
parents--the same generations who think they were tougher when they were kids,
are creating problems by never saying no to their own offspring. And, schools
don't ever want to keep students back, so the curriculum is designed so that
anybody who shows up to class can pass. Required daily homework and classwork
that might represent 50% of one's grade, instead of a couple of tests that
define 80% of one's grade, teaches kids to focus on submitting paperwork
instead of actually putting in thought nor allowing them to figure out how to
do the learning they might need to do.

This process works to ignore incompetency in basic abilities year after year
in students, as long as they have good grades, the fact which allows educators
to say that college opportunities their kids have available to them are also
good, and therefore, that they did their job. Not to mention that schooling
our students one month longer, and for 2 years longer, than other countries
do, in the same "conditions" described, furthers work towards decreasing
independent thought and leaves many kids unprepared for real life.

Sometimes I wonder if that when people think our education system does our
kids justice because our students are better at sports (that are mostly only
played in the US), have more options of after-school activities, and have the
chance (based on parent income) to utilize many different types of expensive
private educational tools, tutors, "theories", consultants, certifications,
and textbooks, if they're not missing that...

...the huge factor that explains why our students end up being more
entrepreneurial or have the potential to get paid a lot of money when they
finally do grow up, is that the US is incredibly wealthy--and at the same time
cannot keep track of money any better than its average citizen--than that
we're good at educating our students remotely close to what we should be given
the money the government budgets for education.

I don't think we would hinder our country's strength in either
entrepreneurship or Football, Baseball, Lacrosse, and Softball programs if we
were to increase our understanding of math and science in this country; nor
would it hurt to have a law that would require mandatory monthly teacher to
parent education on what is expected of their student and ways the parent can
help the student actually succeed at learning the material rather than
submitting enough homework assignments to pass. Of course, having more
educated people instead of "consumers" could affect our economy "negatively"
as well as positively, but there are already many ways our economy is being
pulled in both directions, so I don't think that teaching arithmetic and the
scientific method to everyone would be a crazy thing to do.

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whacked_new
Thanks for the great read.

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tphyahoo
I read this as "Social Standing Still Predicts Better than IQ..." ... coulda
used a better headline.

