Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Early Child Cognitive Development | Hacker News Reader

Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Early Child Cognitive Development

med.papers.bar

16 pointsvpj11 comments

This appears to show that the mean IQ of pandemic cohorts is down by nearly 20 points to around 80, compared to the pre-pandemic testing averaging IQ of 100. This is almost impossible to believe, unless perhaps "social distancing" is just extremely devastating to early childhood education--is there any other previous studies showing such a drastic impact on isolated children though?

> Moreover, we find that males and children in lower socioeconomic families have been most affected.

But arent these the same groups that ignored social distancing the most?

People could then interpret this paper exactly as they want: (a) lockdown made people dumb or (b) being in contact with the virus makes people dumb.

Is this really that surprising? Human beings are social animals and learn by imitation. Locking newborns into a room and preventing them from interacting with the world will stunt their development.

The effects of “long lockdown” are almost certainly going to be worse than those of “long covid.”

Not that it is surprising, it is rather being constantly ignored.

This is a bullshit study. IQ measurement among 1-year olds is less reliable than astrology.

And even if it weren’t, they were wearing masks when interacting with these toddlers, which, at this age, makes a lot of difference in how well you can elicit the response you want from them.

An IQ of 80 is borderline pathological. There is no way for something of this magnitude to happen, on average no less, without violence, substance abuse, or similar.

> An IQ of 80 is borderline pathological.

While controversial in everyday conversation, intelligence has been measured around the world, and in many countries 80 or even below is the average. If you see the Wikipedia article “Heritability of IQ” you will find that it is mostly inherited, like for example height which can be stunted in childhood, but not easily increased.

Many people live good lives like this, although the modern world must present many challenges to these unfortunate many.

The article doesn’t say that. But, looking at, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nations_and_IQ, you’ll find that scientific consensus is something like ‘ Any conclusions drawn from analyses which use these data are therefore unsound, and no reliable evolutionary work should be using these data”.

And I don’t even understand[0] why you feel the need to bring some racist theorizing from the 70s into it? Yes, I would believe there are many people with severe mental retardation that are, nonetheless, happy. That doesn’t mean, however, that I won’t try to avoid head trauma.

0: I’m kidding… I know exactly why you keep bringing up supposed IQ differences between ethnicities in your comments. But, unfortunately, HN considers it totally ok to say “look at Africa and how stupid but happy they all are” as long as you make it sound sciency, while calling out such racism is considered ill-tempered.

My reply was to the claim that 80IQ was pathological, while it in fact is norm in many places, and not pathological. As I wrote, many live good lives with 80 IQ points, even if the modern world presents many challenges to this group.

Everyone talking about IQ didn't read the study.

Right.. they are not talking about IQ, but just happen to use measures of cognitive skills adjusted to a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. Like IQ

Measuring verbal and motor skills among young children is not the same as an IQ test. We are taking about clear milestones.

You're framing these scores as though they measure the same things in the same ways as IQ tests. IQ tests are basically bullshit among the adult population. It's pretty easy to say that most 1 year olds can walk, so if you have a 15 month old that can't, it's notable. Once flagged in this way, kids are screened more thoroughly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com