Saying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment", if I understand the claim correctly. While I'm sure talking to ones children contributes in a massively positive way to their IQ, I think it's extremely inaccurate and ignorant to the existence of real-world outliers to claim that it's the only factor.
To provide just one example (out of many, I'm sure): I was born into a very poor (far below poverty level) working class family that was extremely techno-phobic. Despite being actively discouraged almost throughout my childhood of pursuing an intellectual career, I always had an intrinsic motivation and desire to learn and create tech-related things. This ultimately lead to where I am now, as a software engineer (and I'm definitely the only one like this from my family, a clear outlier).
To this day I can't come up with a single environmental influence that explains this -- and believe me, I've tried. I don't mean for this example to detract from the positive message of the article -- that talking to children is very beneficial to their cognitive development (obviously) -- but hopefully to demonstrate that it's a lot more complex than just environmental factors.
This is a useless nitpick. It's not a scientific treatise, it's a public service message to try to change people's behavior.
I don't believe for a second that the doctor believes that intelligence has no inherited component whatsoever. She is dealing with a problem in the real world using what tools she has at her disposal.
Edit: Responding jamesaguilar's and true_religion's point about the title. Yes, that's true. I had just read the article and the title wasn't in the forefront of my mind. But when you get a title like that, you simply can't know whether it is meant as a bald statement or rather as something to pique the interest (or as link bait, if you aren't feeling charitable). So, if you elect to click the link, read the article to find out!
He "directly contradicted" an article full of references to actual research, with a single personal anecdote.
I'm not even sure it proves what he thinks it proves. Is he inherently smarter than the rest of his family? Or just more motivated? Or more interested in technology? Is success in computer programming direct proof that someone is very smart? I think a lot of programmers take that as received wisdom, but again I'm not so sure.
Anyway, if a child is one of the rare born geniuses, talking to them a lot will not harm them, and it might feed their latent abilities. If a child is genetically normal, talking will help them too. There is no practical reason to object to this article.
So we "simply can't know" whether the title should be taken at face value, but at the same time the parent's point is a "useless nitpick" because it's irrelevant to the main point of the article. Nice.
If we "simply can't know" what the point is, then how do you decide what's relevant?
Yarg. I _knew_ I shouldn't have included the 'useless nitpick' line as it was needlessly aggressive.
But to respond: No, not at the same time. As I said in the edit, the title slipped my mind. Without the title it came across as a useless nitpick, with the title it does not even if I find it an uninteresting avenue of discussion.
Children are not born smart in much the same way that children are not born strong. Of course, some children are born with more potential smartness, just like some children are born with more potential strength. But they still need the environment to reach their full potential. There are some outliers who become really smart despite the lack of help from their environment, but probably they would have become even smarter in a helpful environment.
A better analogy is height. Given some minimal level of nutrition, a child's adult height can be extrapolated quite accurately from their parents' genomes. However, if a child grows up in abject poverty, all bets are off. See Judith Rich Harris' The Nurture Assumption [1] for details.
I also found the book 'Selfish reasons to have more kids' interesting on this topic. It uses twin studies to suggest that although parenting does have an effect in the short term, in the long term genetic factors are dominant as long as the child is raised outside abject poverty.
The conclusion of the book is: provide a healthy environment, but don't agonize over violin lessons and other 'enriching' activities.
That said, I went and bought another book with advice on how to talk to your child to stimulate language development ('look who's talking') and we read to him a lot. So, I believe the twin studies in theory, but not in practice.
Finally, on this general topic, 'how children succeed' points out that character traits like grit (willingness to keep trying something hard and unpleasant) and conscientiousness (desire to do the right thing) are more important than intellect in success, beyond some modest intellect baseline. I suspect my son is plenty smart, but what really interests me is trying to foster grit and conscientiousness.
Another trait that's important for success in life is deferred gratification, or the ability to give up a small immediate reward for a larger reward in the future. That trait, when measured in children, is correlated with all sorts of positive things later in life, including academic success and physical health.
The study I assume you are basing your statement that '[delayed gratification] when measured in children, is correlated with all sorts of positive things' has largely been debunked. When the poverty level of the children tested is factored out, the effect disappears.
It seems what is really being shown is the rational basis in children to discount promises made by adults for future rewards, when in their experience adults had been unable or unwilling to deliver on promises made.
I don't think either of those two links refute the idea that "delayed gratification when measured in children, is correlated with all sorts of positive things".
From The Daily Beast article: "Eigsti does not feel her data disproves Mischel—he was actually a co-author on her paper, and she thinks her work is consistent."
The Priconomics article says: "The original marshmallow experiment concluded that the children's ability to wait for a second treat indicated an innate ability to exhibit self control". But nothing I've read indicates that Mischel believed the ability to delay gratification was innate. In fact, most of his previous research indicated that such an ability was strongly influenced by environmental factors.
I have the exact same concern. While my kid is only 1.5 years old and as such I don't consider him smart, dumb or anything in between, the thing in the next years I would like to teach him most is exactly what you mention, grit and conscientiousness. This has been on my mind since he was born.
If you want to talk about or discuss some ideas, you can reach me at my email (on profile)
However we barely understand the genetic factors. In humans it can be pretty difficult to control the environment. And then we assume we can understand the genetics of intelligence, when we barely understand either genetics or intelligence itself.
You can keep saying stuff like that, but I hope you're not using it as a pretext for ignoring the latest scientific developments.
Have you heard of GWAS? They've had some major breakthroughs over the past few years, and have recently had some interesting results with regard to educational attainment. From Science:
You claim to "demonstrate that it's a lot more complex than just environmental factors". But the correct conclusion from what you said is that you demonstrated that it's a lot more complex than just the environmental factors that you thought of.
You seem to be concluding genetic factors ("always had an intrinsic motivation"). But "not all environment" does not imply "some genetics", that is a false alternative.
There are more possible factors than just environment and genetics. One is human choice (sometimes called "free will", but that term has a lot of baggage). I do not agree with the perspective of attributing everything to factors, rather than a person's own choices.
Genetics certainly have a role in some sense. If you had different genes, you would have been a cat instead of human, and would not have the brain to be a software engineer.
But the general idea that life is very complicated, and the results of people in similar situations vary -- true so far -- simply does not imply (partial) genetic determinism. "Environment", or more generally alternatives to genetic determinism, is/are very subtle and complex. The world is vastly complicated, "environment" refers to a million factors most of which no one documents.
You had, in many respects, a different life and environment than anyone else had. Everyone has a unique environment at high precision. So whatever result you get, what would that prove?
You wonder how a person with several factors against them could be intelligent and successful? You can't think of any ways, besides genetics? There are a million ways. Poverty, non-wonderful discouraging parents, poor teachers, and whatever else are not one's whole life. You met many people, some more helpful than that. You read some books. Even just an ordered list of what books you read up to age 20 might be unique.
People don't start the same, but even if they did, things would quickly branch, again and again. 30 identical students sit in a classroom. The teacher explains something. By sheer randomness, if nothing else, some students understand it today, and some do not understand it yet. Then the next day the teacher gives a second lecture. Everyone hears "the same" lecture, but they have different situations (having understood or not understood yesterday's lesson), so different students experience "the same lecture" in different ways due to their different situations and perspectives. Similarly, in general, people in "the same environment" are not actually having the same experiences.
Are you claiming people are solely the product of their environment? There is substantial scientific evidence to the contrary.
Keep in mind I'm not saying it's a deterministic inherited thing (it's clearly not). However I believe there is strong evidence that everyone is born with a unique personality and potential. An "environmental chaos theory" does not do justice to unexplained outliers, those with recognized mind-affecting genetic conditions, and many other real-world scenarios.
My situation is even more unusual than you realize. I didn't even meet many people while growing up; throughout my childhood I was almost entirely separated from the outside world (lived secluded in the mountains). Almost no neighbors near by. I never went to public school. Extremely protective parents did not allow us to ever talk to strangers. All this is the same case for my siblings, yet they have no desire to pursue technology, while I do.
Note that by no means am I trying to downplay the importance of environment. I'm simply trying to illustrate that the claim "environment determines 100% of someone's mental and personality development" is empirically wrong.
Which is right up there with the abortion debate. In the vast, vast majority of actual cases, you find relatively little disagreement. Rare edge cases, however, ignite incendiary reactions from both sides.
As a pathologist and father, I'm 100% confident there are very good reasons for electing to abort in a variety of circumstances, not all related to the fetus or mother, though there is little reason to rejoice in any of them.
Similarly, I am 100% certain that human development is part genetics, and part environment. But we can't control our genetics. So I don't worry about that much. Maybe there's some fascinating biology discovered every few years, but I can learn good lessons from observing other parents every day.
Maybe that's a good way to frame the environment issue: if you really don't believe environment matters, then ask yourself, should you have kids so you have someone to take your frustrations out on?
I think what you're missing is that, for whatever reason, we are genetically programmed to seek balance. Whatever is missing in your childhood environment, you will search for as an adult.
The metaphor that comes to mind is this: imagine yourself as a spring, standing upright. In childhood, this spring was held down by a heavy boot. Now that the boot has lifted, what has happened to the spring? Is it back to the original height, or has it stretched even higher?
That's a nice thought but not a fact. Some who are held down search for what they were deprived, some don't. I would assume the many examples of this are all anecdotal since they make great stories. The flip side is not that uncommon and thus not celebrated and reported about.
Just that the oppressed seek liberation. Some find it, some don't, but they all seek it. If they stop seeking it, they find liberation by becoming the oppressor, either by oppressing others or oppressing themselves.
So individually we see exceptions (Which could be seen differently if studied more) In vast numbers we seen factors.
Apples vs Oranges = Looking at Millions vs Individual.
I am a teacher in a city. My students are 100% below poverty line. My student under perform dramatically for their age when they walk through our doors. BUT there are exceptions. You are possibly one exception. BUT when you look at millions of poor vs millions of upper class there is a HUGE difference.
In your line of thought: Poor people are poor due mainly to genetics. I can't believe that for a second due to how many million of poor in US. My children when they leave the school after one or two years are ahead of their peers who do not come to our school.
Doesn't the claim that human choice isn't a product of environment and genetics bring along all the baggage of "free will"? If my choices aren't based on my experiences (i.e how my physical self perceives my environment) or how my brain was initially configured in-utero, then it starts to suggest that I have a supernatural soul that makes those choices for other reasons.
Unfortunately, we live in an age where its politically incorrect to remotely hint at genetic determinism. Men and women are exactly the same. Dumb people and the ultra smart are exactly the same. Articles that contradict this don't get much traction in the media and certainly don't get on the front page of HN.
We're probably a generation or two away before we can accurately look at these issues without activist groups and other political groups declaring them invalid because of misplaced idealism.
Somewhere there's a modern day Galileo saying "but some children are born smart!"
The problem is subtler and worse than simple censorship. A person who concludes the "wrong" casual effect from the data is branded a racist or at least under suspicion. A person who concludes the "right" causal effect might face criticism but at least is not in danger of being labeled an evil person. Such a lopsided set of incentives creates a very strong bias. In my opinion this bias is much stronger than the bias ("racism") that it evolved in response to.
'I was disadvantaged ipso facto I am simply genetically gifted'.
Could it, perhaps, be that those causal elements in your environment do not work precisely in the way you presume to work? That it's not simply a 'good' upbringing that raises good people? Do you not -- for instance -- have a drive to succeed because of your prior disadvantages in life? Is not the lack of early-life support a driver of your own ambitions?
Oh bull. We know intelligence has some genetic component, or else a sufficiently trained monkey would do calculus. We just don't entirely know what "intelligence" is well enough to measure its precise heritability.
It doesn't have to be. But it does vary from person to person (even if non linearly). What would you say affects the intelligence of people with mental retardation?
In a debate about how things work, "you're wrong because we know you're wrong" isn't a useful argument. As to comparison to other animals, we also know that there is a genetic component to being able to live under water, as fish can do this and humans can't, this doesn't mean some humans are better than others at living without air.
The difference being that humans aren't descended from fish, but are descended from apes. We know that some kind of incremental genetic "improvement" to our intelligence must have evolved and then become universal throughout the populations that speciated to become modern humans.
First, to be pedantic, we aren't descended from apes, just very closely related to them with a common ancestor.
Second, is there any evidence that the evolutionary history of intelligence was linear? How do we know that there wasn't a binary-like change where one generation didn't have our level of intelligence and the next did, and all humans today are descended from that single change, as opposed to it happening gradually?
If you are going to be pedantic, genetically we are not just descended from apes, we are apes. If you look at the evolutionary tree of the apes and monkeys, it makes no sense to consider humans outside the ape group. Chimpanzees and humans are more closely related than Chimpanzees and Gorillas for example.
The only reason we consider humans to be descended from rather than being apes, is that we don't look at the evolutionary tree from the outside. Biologically it makes no sense.
> How do we know that there wasn't a binary-like change where one generation didn't have our level of intelligence and the next did, and all humans today are descended from that single change,
This question seems kind of confused. But we can say with complete certainty that it's not the case that "one generation didn't have our level of intelligence and the next did" because generations don't happen at any particular time. Imagine your ancestor through the paternal line 30 generations back from you (that is, your father's father's father's... father). If you call him generation 1, then you're generation 31. But other people born in the same year as you, also descended from him, will not all be generation 31. And if you married one of them who was, for the sake of argument, only 28 generations removed from him, your children would be, in this labeling scheme, simultaneously generation 32 and generation 29.
The reason I say your question is confused is that the model where there was a "single change", and all humans today descend from it, requires several generations to take hold (as it gradually increases its population share), but you appear to posit only one.
The most simplistic scenario in which a change could happen in "one generation" is if there is one man today born with a mutated gene that protects him against X, and tomorrow X happens which kills all men in the world except him, leaving him to impregnate many women, and all future generations would be descended from him. Not saying that has ever happened (I've no idea, for all I know it might have but does seem fairly unlikely), but in theory it's possible.
The question is how you would get a single allele that gets you from lower apes to fully sapient humans in one mutation, in one individual, that also protects against something which killed off everyone else.
It wouldn't have to be a single mutation, but let's say intelligence is linear from 1 (apes) to 5 (humans). At some point an animal mutated from 1 to 2, then 2 to 3, etc. Each step the more intelligent version ended up killing off the weaker version (either through violence or just through better survival in nature), and we ended up where we are at 5, which all humans begin at and our surroundings (i.e. nurture not nature) can modify that 5 down to 4.9 or up to 5.1
I'm incredibly not an expert on evolution (it shows I'm sure!), but from a logical point of view that seems like it's feasible at least - whether it's incredibly likely or incredibly unlikely I've no idea.
How do we know that there wasn't a binary-like change where one generation didn't have our level of intelligence and the next did, and all humans today are descended from that single change, as opposed to it happening gradually?
Because it's very, very rare for evolution to actually work that way.
Those words are salon's, not the researchers, and they're a headline at that. I wouldn't assume that "it's nurture!" is the ultimate conclusion of this work. I'd suggest they're saying something more along the lines of, "Children who converse less then their peers are less likely to excel".
There is zero doubting that 'nature vs. nurture' is a complicated question (and a false dichotomy) and I don't think this article is making any claims outside of it's pretty narrow (and pretty interesting) focus.
> Saying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment", if I understand the claim correctly.
You don't understand the claim correctly. The claim is that environmental factors (particularly being talked to) are essential to development of intelligence, not that environmental factors determine intelligence entirely.
The distinction between necessary conditions and necessary and sufficient conditions is pretty critical.
You admit that your experience is an outlier ("and I'm definitely the only one like this from my family, a clear outlier"), yet you appear to be trying to use your experience to disprove the effect of environment on intelligence.
You probably wouldn't have an intrinsic motivation and desire to be a biologist. You just happened to pick up technology, thought it was cool and enjoyed it.
Besides, humans tend to do things they are forbidden to.
Your parents didn't stop you from studying "tech-related things" did they? Well, maybe they did but they must have stopped it once they knew it was futile. Otherwise you wouldn't be what you are now.
If your parents tied you up, beat you up etc. to forbid you from studying tech, then that's an environmental factor.
Them not doing so is also an environmental factor.
Believing something is predestined is bullshit. Genetics might give you a better memory, but it doesn't make you a hard worker. Your success depends on your values, priorities and motivation to do so.
Could it of been the fact that you were in such an environment, and had such a desire for something different be the source of your inspiration? I am not even talking money necessarily here, but the lack of intellectual stimulation? That made the doses you received all that much more intoxicating?
All I am saying is that a particular environment can affect someone in unexpected ways.
I come from a unique environment that has allowed me to draw some very interesting conclusions.
I am from a family of 3 children. Two adopted and one "unexpected" natural birth.
One of the three of us has been in prison many times (and we have no other relatives that I know of that have ever been in trouble beyond the occasional speeding/parking ticket).
The other of the three of us is a carbon copy of their biological mother (dress sense, social sense, taste in music/books/films, mannerisms, extreme anti-social behaviour, etc) - they hadn't spoken until my sibling was 25 - so that was 25 years without contact, visibility, etc - and they still turned out to be a near carbon copy.
I followed in my parents footsteps in many ways, more than I realised at the time.
All three of us agree that we got the same toys, the same lollies, same schooling, same opportunities, etc... so we can only put the differences down to nature - and I can tell you that I'm a big believer that nature plays a BIG role in defining what we are...
I've often said "we don't just LOOK like our parents, it's also the nuances in the structure and wiring of our brains".
I have a few kids of my own, and while they are quite different (nerd v/s jock, introvert v/s extrovert, etc) - there are many similarities, unlike my siblings and I.
There are many more environmental factors than that, differences in behaviour between classmates, different friends, even the number of siblings are all environmental factors that I think make a difference.
You can all go to the same school with the same teachers but if one of you have a teacher on a Monday morning and the other has the same teacher Friday afternoon after teaching a stressful ill-disciplined class, then the second child may have a different view of that subject forever.
Did your parents know what the biological parents of your sibling were like ? I am playing the Pygmalion card.
Regarding your brother who has been in prison many times: adopted boys I know of are often in trouble. I think it's really hard to adopt and raise a child born from someone else. Some things don't seem to click.
I wonder what the statistics are telling about adopted children's success in life and how it is linked to biological parents and the adopting family education.
I'm totally willing to buy that talking to kids is good for them ("massively positively" strikes me as overstating the case) and that screen time rots their brains and their ability to ... um ... I forget.
But, as a parent, I have experienced that children are born with a ton of individual personality that is highly noticeable within days. It would be pretty much defy logic (as well as genetics) if some sort of predisposition for intelligence weren't part of this.
Haven't you just excluded nurture ("can't come up with a single environmental influence that explains this") and nature ("I'm definitely the only one like this from my family, a clear outlier")?
If you didn't get if from your family via genes, and you didn't get it from the environment, where else is left? Everyone else seems to be reading your comment as pro-genetics, but given the quote above, I can't see that.
So is nurture, people go to school in different years from their siblings (and parents) etc. and so on.
So it would be a lot stronger case for genetics (assuming it's supposed to be one, and not just a tangential anecdote) if they'd said "No one ever spoke to us but all 7 of my brothers and sisters became top engineers, just like our parents, uncles and cousins (that we'd never met)".
As it stands it seems to recommending having some kind of fortitude (which isn't taught via nurture, or inherited via genetics) as the key element.
Not saying that's it, but when you have someone self-reporting on a forum like this, claiming to be an outlier, there's probably a good bit of luck involved.
You might be interpreting the "claim" more rigidly than is warranted in a popular publication. Personally, I think children are born potentially smart, but intelligence must be developed constantly in my experience. I have found that many people limit their own intelligence by not stressing themselves, and I suspect the same is true for outside influences. There is a reason people associate bookishness with intelligence and I don't think it's a one-way relationship. I have known a few people whom I believe are not potentially smart, but not that many.
Congratulations, you've discovered the bell curve (plus a healthy dose of physical attributes that provide you with positive advantages in our society). We congratulate you for being on the nice side of it.
Saying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment", if I understand the claim correctly.
I don't think it is equivalent. Saying "Children aren't born smart" means no more than that; they don't come out of the womb smart. The degree to which the smartness they develop will depend on an innate potential to be smart and the degree to which it will depend on environmental factors is not addressed by the statement.
Saying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment"
No it isn't. Think of a young mind as putty. When born, it's just a blob of putty. Children aren't born intelligent. As the child grows, the environment shapes the putty. Some children have different putty than other kids- maybe a little more, a little less, a little firmer, a little more plastic.
Thus, intelligence is determined both by what you have to start with, and your environment. You don't have to be born with intelligence, to be born possessing the raw materials to create great intelligence.
It's not like Usain Bolt was born the fastest runner in the world. He became fast, partly thanks to what he had to work with, and partly thanks to his environment. That's the point here.
The title is bunk, but interaction is critical. Also, screenings (starting withe the Denver and going to something like the E-LAP / LAP) are an important item. Correcting an issue at the earliest possible age is important.
Kids are different and are individuals. Genetics, nutrition, interaction, and care all count.
To see the effects of environment you only need to go to a 3rd world country... Reading is a skill that is generally taught (and very difficult to learn without being taught), so when someone is illiterate, it greatly affects their ability to learn anything. Likewise, people CAN overcome their disadvantages, depending on how severe the disadvantages and how motivated (overcoming negative parents is easier than overcoming illiteracy and being forced to labour in a sweatshop at 10 years of age)...
This article is merely a less extreme example of how taking an active interest in your child's education can help them develop, which is 100% true. For me, personally, I could read/write/speak 2 languages at 4 years of age, in large part thanks to my early childhood environment.
>He is interested in the proper method of rearing children, believing that "geniuses are made, not born".
>He home-schooled their three daughters, primarily in chess, and all three went on to become strong players. An early result was Susan's winning the Budapest Chess Championship for girls under 11 at the age of four. Also his daughter, Judit, could defeat him at chess when she was just five.
Judit became the best female chess player ever and was the youngest GM back then when she was 15.
The article gives an 'example' where the child of the janitor is 'smarter' than the one of the doctor or college student.
So the question is, did your parents talk to you? (not where your parents astrophysicists?)
>> “Now I know I can just have a regular conversation with her,” Adams said. “Just ask her about her day, even if I can’t understand half of it.”
If your parents mostly ignored you, plugged you in the TV, didn't ask you open questions and left you to yourself since a very early age then you may be an exception. (of course your memories from 1 - 5 may not be all that accurate either. What do your parents say about talking to you and making you talk?)
The fact that they were technophobic might have been what saved you, since instead of sitting in front of the TV or computers, people were actually talking to each other.
I read it as the author of that quote explicitly _choosing_ to say that to make the message simpler to his target audience. I think the author fully understands that in reality it's a mix of both nurture and nature but there's plenty of unfulfilled potential in those kids so telling a little fib will help to push them to maximize their potential...and right now no one can definitively predict what that max is just by looking at their genetics
Pinker, in "The Blank Slate", cites research that shows that in the nature-vs-nurture debate it appears to be 50/50. Interestingly, of the nurture half, peer group has a much larger influence than parents.
Given that, I'm curious to know what kinds of friends you had growing up and whether they might account for some of your 'intrinsic motivation'.
I wonder if epigenetics [1] can also explain some of what you're saying. Genes can be regulated in different ways - and that can explain differences in identical Twins.
Are you implying that Software Engineers are smart?
I ask as a Software Engineer who came from a family of techno-phobic Pipefitters. Don't we just have a particular kind of intelligence, and they may have theirs?
Intelligence is entirely environmental: if your environment contains nano- and bio-tech that will rebuild your brain to be physically identical with another person's, you will have the same IQ.
> Saying "Children aren't born smart" is equivalent to saying "Intelligence is determined entirely by one's environment", if I understand the claim correctly. While I'm sure talking to ones children contributes in a massively positive way to their IQ, I think it's extremely inaccurate and ignorant to the existence of real-world outliers to claim that it's the only factor.
If the stunted growth of the pre-lingual deaf that are denied access to a sign language community are any indication, it's probably the most important factor of all, and I think that was the point of the article. I will quote a section of Oliver Sacks' great book "Seeing Voices" that further illustrates this:
The origin of questioning, of an active and questing disposition in the mind, is not something that arises spontaneously, de novo, or directly from the impact of experience; it stems, it is stimulated, by communicative exchange - it requires dialogue, in particular the complex dialogue of mother and child. It is here, [Hilde] Schlesinger finds, that the dichotomies start:
'Mothers talk with their children, do so very differently, and tend to be more often at one side or the other of a series of dichotomies. Some talk with their youngsters and participate primarily in dialogue; some primarily talk at their children. Some mainly support the actions of their offspring, and if not, provide reasons why not; others primarily control the actions of their children, and do not explain why. Some ask genuine questions ... others constraint questions ... Some are prompted by what the child says or does; others by their own inner needs and interests ... Some describe a large world in which events happened in the past and will happen in the future; others comment only about the here and now ... Some mothers mediate the environment by endowing stimuli with meaning [and others do not].'
A terrible power, it would seem, lies with the mother to communicate with her child properly or not; to introduce probing questions such as "How?" "Why?" and "What if?" or replace them with a mindless monologue of "What's this?" "Do that"; to communicate a sense of logic and causality, or to leave everything at the dumb level of unaccountability; to introduce a vivid sense of place and time, or to refer only to the here and now; to introduce a "generalized reflection of reality," a conceptual world that will give coherence and meaning to life, and challenge the mind and emotions of the child, or to leave everything at the level of the ungeneralized, the unquestioned, at something almost below the animal level of the perceptual. Children, it would seem, cannot choose the world they will live in - the mental and emotional, any more than the physical world; they are dependent, in the beginning, on what they are introduced to by their mothers.
Truth of the matter is, we are born with an unfinished brain that requires nurturing interaction with other humans and with language to truly develop. What's saddening is that Hilde Schlesinger's research is already decades old; this book is from 1989. We have known this for ages and society still has to catch up.
To provide just one example (out of many, I'm sure): I was born into a very poor (far below poverty level) working class family that was extremely techno-phobic. Despite being actively discouraged almost throughout my childhood of pursuing an intellectual career, I always had an intrinsic motivation and desire to learn and create tech-related things. This ultimately lead to where I am now, as a software engineer (and I'm definitely the only one like this from my family, a clear outlier).
To this day I can't come up with a single environmental influence that explains this -- and believe me, I've tried. I don't mean for this example to detract from the positive message of the article -- that talking to children is very beneficial to their cognitive development (obviously) -- but hopefully to demonstrate that it's a lot more complex than just environmental factors.