Read on Twitter
Today I’ll be tweeting about hidden talents in harsh environments. A thread. 1/6
Research on how early experiences shape children’s cognition largely uses a 'deficit model' suggesting that lower income is related to worse academic outcomes. However, this model largely ignores how children might approach learning adaptively in a world of limited resources 2/6
In a new line of work, researchers are exploring how children living in poverty have developed strategies that enable them to cope with their challenging circumstances - these can be viewed as “hidden talents in harsh environments” ( @wfrankenhuis1). 3/6
For example, in unpredictable environments, it might be beneficial to form memories quickly and efficiently. With @allymackey, @amysuefinn, we found that indeed, children from lower income backgrounds were great at this form of associative memory. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00554/full 4/6
What are some other “hidden talents in harsh environments”? Tracking rapidly changing conditions, shifting among different tasks, and detecting imminent dangers. A great 5-min video explaining this here: 5/6
A nice review paper by @wfrankenhuis1 about this topic here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0963721419881154. 6/6
