doubtingthomas wrote: ↑Sun May 01, 2022 10:45 pm
Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Sun May 01, 2022 1:51 pm
Plausible is a much more appropriate term.
Okay. We finally agree on something.
Res Ipsa wrote: ↑Sun May 01, 2022 1:51 pm
It does not say much at all about what that means about the individual’s intelligence, common sennse, street smarts, etc.
Can you please clarify? Are you talking the age when intelligence peaks? What is intelligence? Is it the ability to solve difficult problems? Is it good memory skills? And wouldn't that vary from person to person? I think you may be over-complicating things.
And you never said anything about this study, In this section, we examine several lines of evidence derived from both human and animal research that support the hypothesis that the timing of maturation is contextually plastic, socially mediated, and accelerated by intrafamilial stress"
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1935336/
And here is what the Nature paper says, "In conclusion, disparate strands of evidence from neuroscience, psychology and medicine are consistent with a model in which the early environment affects not only the outcome but also the pace of human brain development. We propose that high stress and low cognitive enrichment accelerate developmental changes in cortical thickness and surface area, and shift the trajectory and amplitude of functional network segregation across development. We argue that changes in the pace of brain development also affect plasticity during development."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-021-00457-5
So wouldn't you think it is likely that people (on average) in low-income areas and countries grow up a little bit faster?
You keep assuming that when these papers use the word “maturation,” they mean something like “behave more like a typical adult.” But that’s not what the researchers are using the term to describe. In fact, it’s not what the papers are talking about at all. The data are all about physical changes to some parts of the brain that typically occur in normally developing brains over time. The papers refer to a body of evidence that appears to show that environment affects the rate of change for those portions of the brain. They use the term maturation to refer to the changes over time.
The state of the research seems to be the presentation of theories for how differences in the environment could affect the rate at which the changes occur at different periods of time. All of the suggested theories are relatively tentative and suggest additional research that needs to be done to understand what causes the rates to change and what consequences those changes might have.
There are Evolutionary Development theories offered as explanations for why humans have relatively long childhood. One of the papers suggests the theory that there is an evolutionary benefit to the relatively slow rate of changes in the brain between birth and adulthood because the developing brain retains plasticity for a longer period of time. Under this theory, speeding up the rate of change is detrimental to brain development because of the shortened period of plasticity.
Although the literature we’ve looked at appears to agree that the faster rate of change is detrimental, none of them attempt to measure the effect in terms of “growing up” or becoming an emotionally mature adult. For all we know, the accelerated rate of physical changes to the brain may interfere with a person becoming an emotionally mature adult.
The one effect that seems to be accepted is that certain environments tend to result in reaching puberty at an earlier age. I haven’t looked at those studies, so I don’t know anything about the evidence or the magnitude of the observed effect.
But in terms of “growing up” or emotional/intellectual/behavioral maturity, none of the studies you’ve cited have even attended to measure that. Certainly such a study could be done by testing adolescents for “maturity” at specific ages and taking MRI images of their brains over time to see if there is a correlation between “growing up” and the observed higher rate of brain changes. But none of these studies even try to do that.
You are simply injecting something you appear to want to be true into these studies. For all you know, truncating the period of plasticity may tend to inhibit the development of maturity in the sense that you are using the word.
Specifically, I’ve said nothing about the one paper because your link is to an abstract of a study that is being a paywall. The abstract itself says nothing about examining the rate at which young people in poor neighborhoods mature, so it’s not relevant to your claim.
As to the nature paper, you are again simply refusing to take the entire paper into account — especially where the authors themselves spell out the limitations of the study. And you are again conflating the notion of a mature person with changes in the physical structure of the brain.