Children With An Older Brother Have Poorer Language Skills Than Those With A Big Sister

The role of birth order in shaping who we are has been a matter of some debate in psychology. Recent research has cast doubt on the idea that an individual’s position in relation to their siblings influences their personality, for instance. But there may be other domains where birth order is still important: in particular, researchers have found that children with a greater number of older siblings seem to have worse verbal skills.

However, a new study published in Psychological Science has found that the situation is a bit more complicated than that. Young children with an older sibling do indeed perform worse on language measures, the authors find — but only if that sibling is a brother.



Parents only have a limited amount of time and attention they can split between their children, so the more siblings a child has, the less input they will personally receive from their parents. As parents play an important role in their child’s language development, this could explain why those with a greater number of older siblings have worse language skills.

Naomi Havron at PSL Université and colleagues were interested in how this effect is influenced by the age and sex of an older sibling. There may be less of a negative impact if there is a bigger age gap between siblings, or if the older sibling is a girl, the researchers reasoned. A much older sibling will have better verbal skills, so could themselves become a useful source for younger children to learn about language. And girls tend to have more advanced language skills than boys, so a sister may also provide better input to their younger sibling.

To test these theories, Havron and colleagues looked at data from an ongoing French cohort study called EDEN, which has followed children, and their mothers, from before birth through to age 11. At ages 2, 3 and 5-6, the children’s language skills were measured: at age 2 this simply involved mothers indicating which words their child could say, but at later ages children completed tests such as repeating words and sentences, naming pictures and listing animals. The team analysed the data from 1,276 children who had completed the language tests, including 547 who had an older brother or sister.

The researchers found that, on average, children who had an older sibling had worse language skills than those who didn’t. But as they predicted, the sex of an older sibling was important: kids with older sisters had better language skills than those with older brothers. In fact, a subsequent analysis showed that children with an older sister didn’t actually differ in their language skills from those with no older sibling. On the other hand, the age gap between the siblings didn’t appear to make any difference to language ability after all.

It’s not yet clear why children perform better when they have older sisters, the researchers write. It could be that sisters have better language abilities or are more nurturing than brothers — but another possible explanation is that sisters are less demanding on their parents, taking less parental attention away from their younger siblings than do brothers. Whatever the reason, the authors say, “it … might be more accurate to think of the well-established negative older-sibling effect as an older-brother effect.”

But having an older brother isn’t all bad. Other studies have found that children with older siblings are actually better at some of the social aspects of language, like joining in conversations. And it’s also important to note that although statistically significant, the size of the effects in the study were rather small — and restricted to just a sample of French speakers. It remains to be seen whether similar results are seen in children in other cultures or who speak other languages.

SOURCE:

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/08/23/children-with-an-older-brother-have-poorer-language-skills-than-those-with-a-big-sister/#more-37673(accessed 27.8.19)

Genes have 'small role in children's reading ability'

By Hannah RichardsonBBC News education reporter

A child's genetic make-up has only a small role in determining how good they are at reading, a study suggests.

Researchers looked at the relationship between children's reading scores and their social background using data from a study of 5,000 children.

They then looked at how children's different genetic make-up for genes tied to reading affected those scores.

They found genes accounted for just 2% of the achievement gap between those of high and low social background.

Researchers from the Institute of Education, University of London, used data from the Avon Longitudinal Study to assess whether the tendency for those from a lower social background to have poorer reading skills than those from children of professional backgrounds was down to genetic differences.

Results of reading tests sat at seven, nine and 11 were then divided into five socio-economic groups.

'Infancy'

The researchers found that children with professional parents scored on average 60 out of 100, while children with unskilled parents scored an average of 42. Leaving a gap of of 18 test points.

They then took data on the children's DNA bases and looked at how variations in them tied in with children's reading scores. They did this by analysing the impact of three genes, KIAA0319, CMIP and DCDC2, said to influence reading ability.

They found the genetic factors explained just 2% of the 18-point achievement gap - the equivalent of less than half of one test point, according to the researchers.

Dr John Jerrim said: "We were thinking that there would be a comprehensive and substantial link because of previous research, but that's not what we found."

Earlier studies focusing on twins have suggested that 75% of the variance in children's reading skills is down to genetic factors, but this new research appears to challenge such claims.

Dr Jerriam added: "It is a very small difference and it may come back to the fact that we can only look at these three genes.

"Many more more genes maybe implicated in the reading process - possibly hundreds, each with small independent effects.

"We are not dismissing the role of genetics in influencing children's outcomes. We are simply cautioning the research of this kind is still in its infancy."

The study added: "On the basis of the evidence presented in this paper, we believe that social scientists need to be particularly cautious before advancing the view that genetics plays a major role in this particular aspect of child development."

SOURCE:

BBC News: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22801713 (accessed 08/06/13)

We think more rationally in a foreign language

One of psychology's major contributions has been to document the myriad ways our thinking is sent haywire by a series of biases. Investigations into the ways and means to combat these biases have lagged behind, but that's starting to change. Now a team of researchers at the University of Chicago has reported that people are immune to two key biases when they think in their second, less familiar language.

The first half of the investigation involved well-established framing effects. Participants were told that 600,000 people were at risk from a deadly disease. They were then presented with the same decision framed differently. In one condition, they chose between a medicine (A) that would definitely save 200,000 lives versus another (B) that had a 33.3 per cent chance of saving 600,000 people and a 66.6 per cent chance of saving no one. In another condition, the participants chose between a medicine (A) that meant 400,000 people will die versus another (B) that had a 33.3 per cent chance that no one will die and 66.6 per cent that 600,000 will die.

The gamble in each condition is effectively the same, but numerous studies have shown that people are systematically influenced by the way the choice is framed. In the first condition, the gains of A are made salient, and people tend to prefer the certainty of that option. In the second condition, A's losses are made more salient and people prefer to take the risk of medicine B.

Boaz Keysar and his team showed that dozens of native English speakers showed the typical framing effect when they completed the task in English, but not when they completed the task in their second, classroom-learned language of Japanese. It was a similar story with native Korean speakers - they showed no framing effect when they completed the task in English. And it was the same again with native French speakers when they completed the task in their second language of English. A follow-up study added a third inferior option to the decision task and confirmed that participants weren't just choosing at random when taking part in their second language.

The second half of the investigation focused on loss aversion. We're typically affected emotionally twice as much by losses as we are affected positively by gains of equivalent size. So, presented with a series of bets on the toss of a coin, with the chance to win $1.50 or lose $1, people will tend to shy away from the bet even though the cold logic of probability theory suggests they'll win out in the long run. Keysar and his colleagues gave native English speakers $15 in cash to play 15 rounds of this game, with the chance to keep the balance of their wins and losses at the end. The key finding was that the players were far more willing to gamble when they played the game in their second language of Spanish.

The researchers aren't entirely sure why speaking in a less familiar tongue makes people more "rational", in the sense of not being affected by framing effects or loss aversion. But they think it may have to do with creating psychological distance, encouraging systematic rather than automatic thinking, and with reducing the emotional impact of decisions. This would certainly fit with past research that's shown the emotional impact of swear words, expressions of love and adverts is diminished when they're presented in a less familiar language.

The findings have important implications for international internet research - psychological measures could vary according to whether participants are answering in their mother tongue or in a second language learned later in life. More generally, the researchers said the findings could have ramifications for real life. "People who routinely make decisions in a foreign language rather than their native tongue might be less biased in their savings, investment, and retirement decisions, as a result of reduced myopic loss aversion," they concluded. "Over a long time horizon, this might very well be beneficial."
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RESEARCH DIGEST : http://www.researchdigest.org.uk/

 

Author: Boaz Keysar,, Sayuri L. Hayakawa, and Sun Gyu An (2012). The Foreign-Language Effect, Thinking in a Foreign Tongue Reduces Decision Biases. Psychological Science http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/04/18/0956797611432178,
weblink: http://psychology.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/bkeysar.shtml