Category Archives: Myths

How to raise children? Be a loving parent or rather a tiger mom? Well, bad news for Amy Chua and her following, being a tiger mom doesn’t deliver better grades, en contraire!

A new study by Guadagno et al published in Asian American Journal of Psychology shows that the opposite is rather the case.

From the actual research:

‘Tiger parenting, which owes its existence to the belief that “academic achievement reflects successful parenting” (Chua, 2011), ironically does not result in the best educational attainment or the best academic achievement; instead, it results in children experiencing a level of academic pressure that is as high as that associated with harsh parenting. It is actually supportive parenting, not tiger parenting, which is associated with the best developmental outcomes: low academic pressure, high GPA, high educational attainment, low depressive symptoms, low parent–child alienation, and high family obligation.’

But this doesn’t mean that all the other possible approaches are that better:

Easygoing parenting is associated with similar or better developmental outcomes than tiger parenting, with the exception of Wave 1 family obligation for the adolescent-reported maternal parenting profiles. Harsh parenting is associated with similar or worse developmental outcomes than tiger parenting, which reflects findings in the literature on authoritarian parenting (Nguyen, 2008). These differences are consistent across parent and adolescent reports.

You can also read this article on Slate about the research.

Btw, something that strikes me as interesting in this research: “Over time, the percentage of parents classified as tiger parents decreased among mothers but increased among fathers.”

Abstract of the research:

“Tiger parenting,” as described by Chua (2011, Battle hymn of the tiger mother. New York, NY: Penguin Press), has put parenting in Asian American families in the spotlight. The current study identified parenting profiles in Chinese American families and explored their effects on adolescent adjustment. In a three-wave longitudinal design spanning 8 years, from early adolescence to emerging adulthood, adolescents (54% female), fathers, and mothers from 444 Chinese American families reported on eight parenting dimensions (e.g., warmth and shaming) and six developmental outcomes (e.g., GPA and academic pressure). Latent profile analyses on the eight parenting dimensions demonstrated four parenting profiles: supportive, tiger, easygoing, and harsh parenting. Over time, the percentage of parents classified as tiger parents decreased among mothers but increased among fathers. Path analyses showed that the supportive parenting profile, which was the most common, was associated with the best developmental outcomes, followed by easygoing parenting, tiger parenting, and harsh parenting. Compared with the supportive parenting profile, a tiger parenting profile was associated with lower GPA and educational attainment, as well as less of a sense of family obligation; it was also associated with more academic pressure, more depressive symptoms, and a greater sense of alienation. The current study suggests that, contrary to the common perception, tiger parenting is not the most typical parenting profile in Chinese American families, nor does it lead to optimal adjustment among Chinese American adolescents.

Ask a kid why the sun comes up in the morning, he or she maybe will answer that this is because we need light to work. This is of course wrong, this is called  a “teleological explanation”, the idea that everything has a purpose. This kind of thinking is not really scientific, but a study with 80 physical scientists shows that they too will endorse similar teleological explanations for why nature is the way it is when they are being put under time pressure.

Abstract of the research by Kelemen, Rottman & Seston:

Teleological explanations account for objects and events by reference to a functional consequence or purpose. Although they are popular in religion, they are unpopular in science: Physical scientists in particular explicitly reject them when explaining natural phenomena. However, prior research provides reasons to suspect that this explanatory form may represent a default explanatory preference. As a strong test of this hypothesis, we explored whether physical scientists endorse teleological explanations of natural phenomena when their information-processing resources are limited. In Study 1, physical scientists from top-ranked American universities judged explanations as true or false, either at speed or without time restriction. Like undergraduates and age-matched community participants, scientists demonstrated increased acceptance of unwarranted teleological explanations under speed despite maintaining high accuracy on control items. Scientists’ overall endorsement of inaccurate teleological explanation was lower than comparison groups, however. In Study 2, we explored this further and found that the teleological tendencies of professional scientists did not differ from those of humanities scholars. Thus, although extended education appears to produce an overall reduction in inaccurate teleological explanation, specialization as a scientist does not, in itself, additionally ameliorate scientifically inaccurate purpose-based theories about the natural world. A religion-consistent default cognitive bias toward teleological explanation tenaciously persists and may have subtle but profound consequences for scientific progress.

This blogpost in The New Yorker is a must-read on brain training programs and their effectiveness with a special focus on CogMed. The reason for the article is a new meta-research published by Melby-Lervåg and Hulme. In this paper they compared twenty-three investigations of memory training by teams around the world. The conclusion of their meta-analysis? The games may deliver  improvements in the narrow task being trained, but the often claimed transfers to broader skills like the ability to read or do arithmetic, or to other measures of intelligence, well, they don’t deliver. When you train yourself with those games, you just get better at… playing those games.

In the blogpost you also get the replies of some of the researchers of companies involved (e.g.  two responses by CogMed).

Abstract of the research that triggered the article in The New Yorker:

It has been suggested that working memory training programs are effective both as treatments for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other cognitive disorders in children and as a tool to improve cognitive ability and scholastic attainment in typically developing children and adults. However, effects across studies appear to be variable, and a systematic meta-analytic review was undertaken. To be included in the review, studies had to be randomized controlled trials or quasi-experiments without randomization, have a treatment, and have either a treated group or an untreated control group. Twenty-three studies with 30 group comparisons met the criteria for inclusion. The studies included involved clinical samples and samples of typically developing children and adults. Meta-analyses indicated that the programs produced reliable short-term improvements in working memory skills. For verbal working memory, these near-transfer effects were not sustained at follow-up, whereas for visuospatial working memory, limited evidence suggested that such effects might be maintained. More importantly, there was no convincing evidence of the generalization of working memory training to other skills (nonverbal and verbal ability, inhibitory processes in attention, word decoding, and arithmetic). The authors conclude that memory training programs appear to produce short-term, specific training effects that do not generalize. Possible limitations of the review (including age differences in the samples and the variety of different clinical conditions included) are noted. However, current findings cast doubt on both the clinical relevance of working memory training programs and their utility as methods of enhancing cognitive functioning in typically developing children and healthy adults.