Urban Institute Audio Webcast: Children, the Recession, and the Economic Recovery Plan

Feb. 19, 9am-10:30 E.T. Register for live audio webcast here:

As the economy ails, policymakers, program managers, and service providers will be under extraordinary pressure to get the biggest bang for each buck. Be part of the discussion as experts tackle such questions as

- What happens to children and families during recessions?
- What must federal, state, and local officials do to speedily implement the recovery package and coordinate programs effectively?
- Are service providers ready?
- How will budget-strained states handle a funding infusion?
- Can new and expanded activities jump start change in early childhood programs and other children's initiatives?
- Will the recovery plan's short-term boost take the pressure off Congress to make permanent investments and reforms?
- How should legislators and laypeople measure success?

Panelists:
- Derek Douglas, director, New York governor's Washington office
- Olivia Golden (moderator), institute fellow, Urban Institute; former assistant secretary for children and families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
- Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president, DHE Consulting LLC; director of domestic and economic policy, 2008 John McCain presidential campaign; former director, Congressional Budget Office
- Joan Lombardi, research professor, Public Policy Institute, Georgetown University; first director, Child Care Bureau, Department of Health and Human Services
- Matthew Stagner, executive director, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago

God and Agency in the Mind

Interesting article on why religion may be a byproduct of the way our brain attributes agency to objects and persons, starting very early in childhood:

So how does the brain conjure up gods? One of the key factors, says Bloom, is the fact that our brains have separate cognitive systems for dealing with living things - things with minds, or at least volition - and inanimate objects.

This separation happens very early in life. Bloom and colleagues have shown that babies as young as five months make a distinction between inanimate objects and people. Shown a box moving in a stop-start way, babies show surprise. But a person moving in the same way elicits no surprise. To babies, objects ought to obey the laws of physics and move in a predictable way. People, on the other hand, have their own intentions and goals, and move however they choose.

Bloom says the two systems are autonomous, leaving us with two viewpoints on the world: one that deals with minds, and one that handles physical aspects of the world. He calls this innate assumption that mind and matter are distinct "common-sense dualism". The body is for physical processes, like eating and moving, while the mind carries our consciousness in a separate - and separable - package. "We very naturally accept you can leave your body in a dream, or in astral projection or some sort of magic," Bloom says. "These are universal views."

There is plenty of evidence that thinking about disembodied minds comes naturally. People readily form relationships with non-existent others: roughly half of all 4-year-olds have had an imaginary friend, and adults often form and maintain relationships with dead relatives, fictional characters and fantasy partners. As Barrett points out, this is an evolutionarily useful skill. Without it we would be unable to maintain large social hierarchies and alliances or anticipate what an unseen enemy might be planning. "Requiring a body around to think about its mind would be a great liability," he says.

This leads to beliefs that the world is constructed "for" agents with minds:

Again, experiments on young children reveal this default state of the mind. Children as young as three readily attribute design and purpose to inanimate objects. When Deborah Kelemen of the University of Arizona in Tucson asked 7 and 8-year-old children questions about inanimate objects and animals, she found that most believed they were created for a specific purpose. Pointy rocks are there for animals to scratch themselves on. Birds exist "to make nice music", while rivers exist so boats have something to float on. "It was extraordinary to hear children saying that things like mountains and clouds were 'for' a purpose and appearing highly resistant to any counter-suggestion," says Kelemen.

Poor Kids Need Vitamins: Only Priveliged Kids (Who Don't Need Them) Take them

Interesting study finds that it's privileged kids who don't need vitamins who take them. Poor kids, who have poor diets and might actually benefit are the ones who don't. The investigator had hypothesized that poor families might use vitamins to buffer poor nutrition but found, not surprisingly, that poor kids rarely took vitamins.

There is apparently little research on this, but Richard Rothstein et. al. report on a double-blind study showing that providing vitamin supplements to poor children directly resulted in increased test scores.

But, of course, giving poor kids vitamins in the morning (maybe yummy ones) is not only too difficult to do on a regular basis, it's not really important enough to study very carefully.

Pedagogy. Remember. It's all about pedagogy. That's what we do.

We now return to our regular programming.