I had some questions about the recent study showing brain differences between rich kids and poor kids.
Tyler Cowen did too, so he asked Michelle Dawson, who had this to say about the study:
I read the poor vs rich kids brains study (Kishiyama et al.). It’s a very small study (13 in each group) and the groups aren’t matched on ethnicity. In the major task (the one which got media attention), where the authors looked at ERPs [TC: here is a link on ERP], the performance of the two groups was the same. The performance of the two groups on a Stroop task, a classic test of what the poor kids are said to be incapable of, was also the same. The major performance difference between groups was on vocabulary (the WISC-III vocabulary test), but only a few tests were used. There was no attempt to match the groups on IQ.
So, as Cowen reiterates, the observed difference in electrical current patterns may depend on IQ differences, not poverty, and on the actual major task the poor kids did just as well.