Re: Autism, brain damage and cooperation

2002-07-14 Thread john hull

--- Bryan D Caplan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Actually, I was thinking about kids' amazing ability
to learn languages, which involves massive
memorization.

Language learning is a hard-wired trait--another well
established fact.  Kids pick up language automatically
from their environment.  Some neuroscientists consider
it to be analogous to imprinting, the space for
language is already there waiting to be filled.  This
imprinting faculty dries up around puberty.  That's
why it is so much easier for kids to learn new
languages, and to learn them as native speakers, i.e.
to become true polyglots.  It is also why most adults
are never really able to get rid of their accents when
after learning a new language.

...IQ is this all powerful explanatory device, or
that it is meaningless when it's neither  Not all
powerful, just one of the best available.

The purpose of the IQ test, and its main use, is to
predict school success; it is used to identify
children who need extra help in school before it's too
late.  How this relates to cooperative problems is
another issue.

-jsh


=
...for no one admits that he incurs an obligation to another merely because that 
other has done him no wrong.
-Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Discourse 16.

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Re: Autism, brain damage and cooperation

2002-07-13 Thread Bryan D Caplan

William Dickens wrote:
 
 Come on, Fab - pointing out examples of brain differences explaining
 behavioral differences is hardly convincing evidence that brain
 differences are the right explanation in this case.
 
 Hey Bryan, don't you know the plural of anecdote is data? Seriously, there is plenty 
of evidence (and it is widely accepted) that injuries to different parts of the brain 
consistently produce particular changes in behavior. Not even Jensen would argue that 
g is the only aspect of neurology that matters for behavior (assuming g has a 
neurological basis which is not established).
 
 What is wrong with the notion that there are parts of the brain that specialize in 
controling social behavior and that they develop late? 

Nothing, if you actually have some facts about the brain to share with
us.  But great as we all know Fab is, I don't think his original post
had any such facts to share.  I don't think Fab had anymore reason to
say that children's brains simply aren't developed enough to cooperate
than he had to say Bryan's brain simply isn't developed enough to watch
football.

We know that there are some profoundly specialized cognitive abilities having to do 
precisely with regulating trading behavior. Maybe they develop more slowly than other 
aspects of personality.  - - Bill Dickens

Yea, maybe.  But I was hoping for a less hand-waving answer.
 
 William T. Dickens
 The Brookings Institution
 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
 Washington, DC 20036
 Phone: (202) 797-6113
 FAX: (202) 797-6181
 E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 AOL IM: wtdickens

-- 
Prof. Bryan Caplan
   Department of Economics  George Mason University
http://www.bcaplan.com  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
He lives in deadly terror of agreeing;
 'Twould make him seem an ordinary being.
 Indeed, he's so in love with contradiction,
 He'll turn against his most profound conviction
 And with a furious eloquence deplore it,
 If only someone else is speaking for it.
  Moliere, *The Misanthrope*




Re: Autism, brain damage and cooperation

2002-07-13 Thread Bryan D Caplan

fabio guillermo rojas wrote:
 
  Come on, Fab - pointing out examples of brain differences explaining
  behavioral differences is hardly convincing evidence that brain
  differences are the right explanation in this case.
 
 My point is that behavior is more than cost-benefit calculations
 with IQ as an intervening variable. 

I don't see why you - Fab - would need to say this?  The cognitive
faculties you're talking about could simply alter the cost-benefit
calculations.

 My purpose in citing this kind
 of evidence is that behavior depends on cognitive faculties which
 are dependent on well developed parts of the brain. Damasio's book
 shows some evidence that brain differences *might* lead to behavioral
 differences. I'm not an anatomist, but I wouldn't be surprised if
 children's brains simply didn't have all the parts developed for
 correctly learning social behavior.

You should be very surprised if they lacked the parts, because children
do in fact cooperate some of the time.  

  Yes, there are cognitive abilities with low g-loading, and memory is
  one.  But now that I think about it, I shouldn't have let you get away
  with citing memory differences in the first place.  Children in fact
  seem to have much *better* memorization ability than adults in numerous
  respects.
  Prof. Bryan Caplan
 
 It's well documented that long term memory is nil for children less
 than five years of age (doctors call it pediatric amnesia) and
 is very spotty until about 12. Maybe children can remember strings
 of numbers well in labs, but they can't remember things from a year
 or two ago terribly well. 

Actually, I was thinking about kids' amazing ability to learn languages,
which involves massive memorization.

 Also, while were at it, I think you overinterpret the G-loading thing.

I don't.  Yes, there is a complex statistical process involved in
constructing g.  But this construct correlates highly with our common
sense understanding of intelligence.  It's the natural interpretation.

 My whole point is that obsessing over G might lead one to ignore
 the stuff that leads to G. In a lot of these IQ/behavior debates
 people seems to take extreme positions that IQ is this all powerful
 explanatory device, or that it is meaningless when it's neither.

Not all powerful, just one of the best available.

 I really think that some people are more intelligent than others
 and that this matters alot, but explaining everything in terms of G
 seems a bit dicey to me.

Explaining everything - dicey.  Explaining seemingly stupid behavior of
children - who are already *known* to have much lower raw IQs than
adults - quite plausible.

-- 
Prof. Bryan Caplan
   Department of Economics  George Mason University
http://www.bcaplan.com  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
He lives in deadly terror of agreeing;
 'Twould make him seem an ordinary being.
 Indeed, he's so in love with contradiction,
 He'll turn against his most profound conviction
 And with a furious eloquence deplore it,
 If only someone else is speaking for it.
  Moliere, *The Misanthrope*




RE: Autism, brain damage and cooperation

2002-07-13 Thread dianne sy




It's well documented that long term memory is nil for children less
than five years of age (doctors call it pediatric amnesia) and is 
very spotty until about 12. Maybe children can remember strings of 
numbers well in labs, but they can't remember things from a year or two

ago terribly well. And it's this long term learning that's needed for 
socialization. Social behavior draws from a large pool of past 
experience, not the short term memory tested in laboratories.


If I may butt in... I'm 20 this year, but I remember as clear as
yesterday when I was about 4 yrs old and my grandma was scolding me for
playing in the rain.

My earliest memory starts from early childhood, starting at age 3.

If this may help, I have observed that I have particulary good long-term
memory. 


(Do a real world test: ask a 7 year old about how they misbehaved two 
years ago. If you get anything remotely accurate, I'll buy you lunch.)


I guess this means free lunch for someone. =)


dianne






Re: Autism, brain damage and cooperation

2002-07-13 Thread Anton Sherwood

 fabio guillermo rojas wrote:
  It's well documented that long term memory is nil for children less
  than five years of age (doctors call it pediatric amnesia) and
  is very spotty until about 12. Maybe children can remember strings
  of numbers well in labs, but they can't remember things from a year
  or two ago terribly well.

Bryan D Caplan wrote:
 Actually, I was thinking about kids' amazing ability to learn
 languages, which involves massive memorization.

I'm told there are three kinds of long-term memory -- semantic (`the
capital of France is Paris'), episodic (events personally experienced)
and procedural (how to do stuff) -- and strength in one does not imply
strength in another.  Social cooperation depends on episodic memory,
language on the other two.

-- 
Anton Sherwood, http://www.ogre.nu/




Autism, brain damage and cooperation

2002-07-12 Thread fabio guillermo rojas


 In any case, all of the deficiencies in children's brains you point out
 more or less sound like extensions of their low absolute IQ.

Not really. One listed deficiency is memory. That might be correlated with
IQ, but it's certainly not the same as IQ. Analogy: a computer with a
small storage capacity might have sophisticated software (analogy with
low memory/high IQ).

Real world example: Autistic children. Their behavior is described
as misbehavior because they simply can't learn how to interact with
adults. However, they can perform very complex tasks such as math
problems and some autistic people have been able to score well on IQ
tests. 

Abother real world example: In the book Descarte's Error, a well
adjusted rail road worker in the 19th century is injured on the job. He 
recieves a severe trauma to the head which results in localized
brain damage. According to the author, the part of the brain which
was damaged many scientists believe is responsible for producing
emotions, which may conflict with detached rationalist thinking. 
Once the railroad worker recovered from his injury, he abandoned his
job, started to consort with criminals and lived the rest of his
life as a con-artist. As far as people could tell, he retained his
cognitive abilities but his personality completely changed.

My conclusion from such facts is that the ability to conduct normal
social interactions is a combination of learning, IQ, percpetion,
memory and other mental abilities. You really can't bundle them
all together. Child misbehavior is not reducible to IQ, but might
be a result of one or more of a deficiency in one or more of these
mental abilities. A simple economic model really seems to leave
a lot out. 

Fabio





Re: Autism, brain damage and cooperation

2002-07-12 Thread john hull

fabio guillermo rojas [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
...a well adjusted rail road worker in the 19th
century is injured on the job.

It was Phineas Gage, he had a tamping iron blown
throught his head.  The Malcolm Macmillan School of
Psychology has a homepage dedicated to him at
www.deakin.edu.au/hbs/GAGEPAGE .  It is fairly
thorough.

-jsh



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Re: Autism, brain damage and cooperation

2002-07-12 Thread fabio guillermo rojas


 Come on, Fab - pointing out examples of brain differences explaining
 behavioral differences is hardly convincing evidence that brain
 differences are the right explanation in this case.

My point is that behavior is more than cost-benefit calculations
with IQ as an intervening variable. My purpose in citing this kind
of evidence is that behavior depends on cognitive faculties which
are dependent on well developed parts of the brain. Damasio's book
shows some evidence that brain differences *might* lead to behavioral
differences. I'm not an anatomist, but I wouldn't be surprised if
children's brains simply didn't have all the parts developed for
correctly learning social behavior. 

 Yes, there are cognitive abilities with low g-loading, and memory is
 one.  But now that I think about it, I shouldn't have let you get away
 with citing memory differences in the first place.  Children in fact
 seem to have much *better* memorization ability than adults in numerous
 respects.
 Prof. Bryan Caplan

It's well documented that long term memory is nil for children less
than five years of age (doctors call it pediatric amnesia) and
is very spotty until about 12. Maybe children can remember strings
of numbers well in labs, but they can't remember things from a year
or two ago terribly well. And it's this long term learning that's
needed for socialization. Social behavior draws from a large
pool of past experience, not the short term memory tested in laboratories.

(Do a real world test: ask a 7 year old about how they misbehaved
two years ago. If you get anything remotely accurate, I'll
buy you lunch.)

Also, while were at it, I think you overinterpret the G-loading thing.
A G-loading is essentially a factor analysis of responses to a
standardized test. Statistically, you estimate a linear model.

G - response to Question 1
G - ... Question 2, etc.

G is often called a latent factor that is *unmeasured*. See any
non-economics statistics book (economists rarely use this and it's
not in Golderger, Amimiya or Greene). 

Then you can test alternative models like

G1 - Q1, Q2, Q4
G2 - Q3, Q5, etc. and do model comparisons.

IIUC, the psychometric literature has found that the first model
has a really good fit while other models have poorer fits for
tests of abstract thinking. What is this G? It's a *construct* from
the test, not a direct measurement of anything. Which means to
assert one single process called IQ is really strecthing it.

What you can safely say is that G is the dimension along which
test responses vary. This dimension can be the consequence
of a bunch of other things and you can collect data to test
hypotheses about these more complex models:

F1, F2 -- G -- Q1, Q2, Q3.

My whole point is that obsessing over G might lead one to ignore
the stuff that leads to G. In a lot of these IQ/behavior debates
people seems to take extreme positions that IQ is this all powerful
explanatory device, or that it is meaningless when it's neither.

I really think that some people are more intelligent than others
and that this matters alot, but explaining everything in terms of G
seems a bit dicey to me. 

Fabio








Re: Autism, brain damage and cooperation

2002-07-12 Thread john hull


--- fabio guillermo rojas
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
It's well documented that long term memory is nil for
children less than five years of age (doctors call it
pediatric amnesia)

The Hippacampus isn't fully developed, and it's the
organ of the brain responsible for transferring short
term memories into long term memories.  It is well
documented that adults with hippacampal lesions cannot
put memories into long term storage.  

The brain goes through alot of development and fine
tuning up through adolescense, and the formative years
are when all the major pathways are solidified. 
Additionally, it's also the time when all the unused
neurons die; the only time more neurons die than in
early childhood is at death.  

Still, it nevertheless seems odd to address the
question to children's non-cooperation--Mr. Hanson's
post notwithstanding.  Cooperation as we think of it
here in the west is not really a species wide
phenomenon; i.e. it's probably not instictive.  As I
understand it, about 40% of adult male Yanomami have
killed another person and about 25% of adult males
will die from some form of violence.  That's hardly
the sort of peacful social cooperation that this
string seems to assume.  In some cultures it is
considered kosher to hide in wait and actually hunt
people.

While I WOULD be interested to see how child
cooperative behavior compares between modern societies
and hunter-gatherer societies, as Mr. Hanson
suggested, it still seems a bit unreasonable to
suggest that adult cooperative behavior as we
understand it is the standard against which the
strangeness of child behavior should be guaged. 
Rather one should ask:
1. Is child social behavior more stereotyped across
the species?  And if so
2. Why does adult behavior develop the way it does in
so many different forms?  Or possibly 
3. If child social behavior not stereotyped across the
species, what accounts for the differences.

Thanks for your time,
jsh



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