Sunday 10 July 2011

The new biological determinism

I tentatively suggested yesterday that some developmental problems in childhood might not be entirely biological in origin. It says something about the modern world that the very idea was greeted by some with anger and disbelief! Why should this be? The answer is historical.

Fifty years ago, practically any mental or development problem was thought to be a consequence of the environment. Autistic children became that way because of remote and unaffectionate parents. Schizophrenia was produced by bad family dynamics. Reading problems were caused by poor teaching, badly behaved children had not received any discipline and all other childhood disorders could generally be traced back to the mother’s actions or lack of action. In the wider field, homosexuality was a result of too much motherly love and alcoholics were weak people who lacked self control. This then was the prevailing paradigm until a few decades ago.

Then it was discovered that certain disorders and syndromes were associated with a distinctive arrangement of genes. The pendulum swung right away from social and psychological explanations for the things mentioned above and we found a genetic cause for practically everything; even stealing and rape were thought initially to have a genetic ’cause’. Obviously, this ’hard’ version of genetic causation is absurd. To give an example from my own life; both my parents were alcoholics, as are my brother and sister. I was myself a little too fond of alcohol and so thirty years ago, I stopped drinking. No doubt in anybody’s mind that if anyone carries the alcoholic gene, it’s me! Now if I went down to the off licence this afternoon and bought a bottle of whiskey and got drunk; would that be caused by my genes? Of course not, it would be my own idiocy to blame. Even when genes give a certain predisposition, there is plenty of leeway for individual choice and the effect of the environment. So too with childhood disorders.

Commenting here yesterday, somebody said apropos of a certain childhood syndrome:

Or shall we accept that research is showing that some peoples brains are wired differently and respond to stimuli differently.’

Well of course we shall accept that! It is without doubt true. However it does not explain anything at all. When the baby is born, this wiring is not really in place. The neurones are all there and they are getting ready to make the connections. It is quite true that in the case of children with ADHD or dyslexia the wiring is sometimes, although not always, a little different. How did this come to be? Was it a predetermined response to the genetic instructions or was it caused by the first years of life and the lifestyle of the developing infant? Or, which is far more likely, was it a subtle combination of both? Might it be that the newborn baby had a slight inclination in a certain direction, an inclination which the early environment might bring out and allow to flourish?

The difficulty in accepting that everything, from Heller’s Syndrome to dyslexia, is caused by biological factors is that the families of children presenting with certain disorders do often seem to have certain characteristics. Of course, this does not mean that the families have caused the problem in the first place. Children who are very poor readers often have parents who are semi-literate. Is this environment or heredity? Hard to say. Perhaps the parents have a genetic tendency to dyslexia and it is this which makes them poor readers. They might simply have passed this genetic disorder on to their child. On the other hand, perhaps not having good role models for reading has had a bad effect on the growing child and not taught him the value of literacy.

One thing is clear to me and that is that this is not a popular line of enquiry! Vox populi, vox dei! I shall accordingly drop this particular musing and return to the more practical and vastly less controversial topic of home education. We are as parents eager to take the credit for all the good aspects of our children's characters and often try to unload the less desirable traits onto the influence of others. Sometimes the blame can be laid at the door of fellow schoolchildren who have led them astray, but genetics allows us to lay responsibility for certain parts of our child's behaviour on long dead relatives! It's not Jimmy's fault or mine; his grandfather must have given him the poor reading/hyperactive/bad behaviour/night owl/alcoholic gene.

32 comments:

  1. Ahh Simon,

    you must have seen this?

    how to write an article on parenting.

    http://www.alfiekohn.org/phpnews_1-3-0/news.php?action=fullnews&id=15

    elizabeth

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  2. I think its a very interesting debate; nature v nurture always is!
    I really only took issue with the suggestion that syndromes and conditions are ALWAYS caused by parents. I feel its important to acknowledge that this isn't always the case.

    I do believe that parents are the cause of many problems with children. Many behaviourally challenged kids I have encountered do have ineffective parents, but your writing yesterday suggested that all parents are to blame for all disorders. This is simply not the case and if it were as simple as that our kids would be getting better, maybe even cured from their SENS as a result of improved parenting - sadly this doesnt happen.
    What actually happens is that parents work very hard to learn to manage the childrens' needs and help them manage themselves but the children will still have the disorders into adulthood.

    There will always be parents who are to blame for child behaviours and there will always be children who make really bad choices and behave badly. But there will always be those kids who genuinely have SENS, not caused by parents or outside factors. What the parents need, much more than judgement and criticism, is understanding and support whilst they adjust to their child's management and care.

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  3. C said:

    "I think its a very interesting debate; nature v nurture always is!
    I really only took issue with the suggestion that syndromes and conditions are ALWAYS caused by parents. I feel its important to acknowledge that this isn't always the case."

    Precisely.

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  4. Simon said:
    "When the baby is born, this wiring is not really in place. The neurones are all there and they are getting ready to make the connections."

    You would do well to read up on current research in neuroscience, and perhaps you would like to start here:

    http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/43594795/ns/today-parenting_and_family/

    The print copy isn't out yet but the pdf of the paper is available for pay here:

    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982211006543

    "These results suggest remarkably early functional specialization for processing human voice and negative emotions."

    I agree, you should go back to talking about home education, until you have read up on SEND and become more knowledgable.

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  5. With reference to the article about specialization for voice processing and negative emotions, it doesn't suggest, as far as I can see, that Simon's claim that the wiring isn't really in place is wrong.

    Work on infant categorization of sensory information suggests that babies rapidly develop the neural pathways that are used for functions like voice recognition and emotional processing. The babies in this study were between three and seven months old. Three months is quite a long time in neural development terms and seven months is positively ancient.

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  6. Simon says - Might it be that the newborn baby had a slight inclination in a certain direction, an inclination which the early environment might bring out and allow to flourish?

    Well, of course it 'might' be. It might equally be the a newborn baby had a massive difference that the early environment has to be adapted to mitigate. I'm thinking here of children with acute sensitivity to touch, sound and smells, which are recognised characteristics of autism and which make everyday life a minefield.

    You were right to say that fifty years ago everything was considered the parents fault. In my experience, you are wrong to say that the pendulum has swung the other way. In times of cutbacks it is so much cheaper and easier to blame parents or label them as overanxious or pushy or looking for excuses than look for underlying causes and maybe help the child. So, it is left to parents to try various approaches to make day to day life easier. Not as easy as it would be for parents of a child not so affected. Just easier. Then the 'experts' criticise them for those too...

    Please, Simon, go back to talking about home education rather than than generalising about a world you only visit the edges of and only in some pretty horrendous sounding cases. Even then, please, accept that children are not all the same and that academic qualifications are not the only measure of success. I applaud what you and Simone achieved together and we are doing something similar, but it won't work for every child and it isn't fair to write off whole groups of children because their talents aren't in passing exams.

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  7. 'I really only took issue with the suggestion that syndromes and conditions are ALWAYS caused by parents. I feel its important to acknowledge that this isn't always the case.'

    I neither suggested this, nor have ever believed it to be true. That is why the piece yesterday was littered with words and expressions like 'possible', 'some' 'might be' and so on.The whole tone was that there might be link; not that there was and that this was always the case.

    Simon.

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  8. 'Even then, please, accept that children are not all the same and that academic qualifications are not the only measure of success.'

    Nothing I have written today or yesterday had any bearing at all on academic qualifications.

    Simon.

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  9. 'You would do well to read up on current research in neuroscience, and perhaps you would like to start here:'

    I mention newborn babies and you quote research concerning those who are six months old. I'm not sure that I see the connection.

    Simon.

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  10. "I mention newborn babies and you quote research concerning those who are six months old. I'm not sure that I see the connection."

    If you look at the abstract they said that previously they had done this research with 7 month olds. They have now done it with three month olds and found that there was wiring in the brain already. That doesn't mean that new born babies don't have connections already, it means that they don't know yet as that research hasn't been done, but as they do more research they are finding that various parts of the brain do appear to be wired up already. The brain starts developing in utero.

    There is a wealth of research going on in such diverse areas such as epigenetics where what happened to grandparents can affect their grandchildren's genes, testosterone in utero and autism, and so much more. The picture is much bigger than a simple nature/nurture post natal situation.

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  11. Simon wrote... "That is why the piece yesterday was littered with words and expressions like 'possible', 'some' 'might be' and so on."

    And I am glad you used these words.
    The pieces you wrote though, were full of suggestions of how parents were quick to pass the buck when it is their fault, and ways in which you suggested society might prefer to diagnose rather than confront parents at fault.

    I dont think you are wrong in your recognition of parental fault, especially within dysfunctional and deprived families; I have seen a lot of evidence to back up this suggestion.
    Writing things such as "Of course the trend these days is to pretend that children’s problems are like illnesses which have struck for no apparent reason; certainly nothing to do with parenting. Anybody who works with kids knows that this is nonsense." is a strong suggestion that you believe this to be true of all children, even though this isnt actually what you meant.

    I think there is a cafeul balance is all. I believe that parents who are dysfuntional can pass those difficulties to their children but equally children from 'good upbringings' are struck with disorders when they should be fine if it were about parental fault. For every argument there is a counter argument that can be just as persuasive - there is no easy answer.
    The answer could be to present yours with the angle of "some might suggest...." rather than saying "in most cases" because the latter tone conveys your meaning wrongly.

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  12. 'The picture is much bigger than a simple nature/nurture post natal situation.'

    This quite true and pretty much what I was saying. You mention testosterone levels during pregnancy, for instance. These can vary according to the stress which the mother is undergoing. Does this make them an environmental factor? I was trying to get at precisely this point, that childhood problems are caused by a combination of these things. We can seldom do anything about our child's gnetic inheritance, but we can affect the environment in which he grows up. Elsewhere, somebody mentioned drinking during preganancy.

    Simon.

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  13. "No doubt in anybody’s mind that if anyone carries the alcoholic gene, it’s me!"

    You are oversimplifying genetics as you oversimplify most htings. Why would you think you have the alcoholic gene (and why singular)? Some genes are protective and some causative and you have a different mix than your siblings. Maybe you just got lucky and gained more protective and fewer causative genes than your siblings? You may be a carrier of causative genes and these may be passed on to children. If your protective genes are also passed on then great, your children's risk of becoming an alcoholic are reduced. However, if these genes are replaced by non-protective or causative genes from the child's mother, a completely different outcome may result.

    Twin studies show that genetics account for 55%-65% of the risk of becoming an alcoholic, with childhood environment and then later life experiences making up the rest, so the odds are in favour of good genes saved you rather than willpower (though obviously that helps and who knows, may also be genetically determined), especially as you shared a similar childhood environment to your siblings. Adoptees with alcoholic biological parents are 2-6 times more likely to become alcoholic than adoptees with non-alcoholic birth parents whatever their childhood environment.

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  14. 'You are oversimplifying genetics as you oversimplify most htings.'

    These posts are very short and intended for a lay audience. I am perfectly aware that the situation with genetics is not straightforward; I was making a point about the ability to choose not to follow a course which one's inheritance angles one towards. Perhaps if this blog were a full-time job, I might be able to do justice to some of the more complicated ideas I discuss. As I only spend ten or twenty minutes a day on it, there is not really time to do so.

    Simon.

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  15. "I was making a point about the ability to choose not to follow a course which one's inheritance angles one towards."

    But you don't show this using the example you gave. If you had an identical twin, maybe...

    "As I only spend ten or twenty minutes a day on it, there is not really time to do so."

    Well you spent 28 minutes viewing 11 pages from 12.45 and 51 minutes viewing 20 pages from 11.20 today, so maybe you could spent that time more profitably?

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  16. 'Well you spent 28 minutes viewing 11 pages from 12.45 and 51 minutes viewing 20 pages from 11.20 today, so maybe you could spent that time more profitably?'

    Ah, I see where the misunderstanding has arisen here. I have been working on a book this morning.I do this on my computer, while the Internet is running. I have a window open for Google and various others, including two blogs. This means that all the time that I am actually typing, the computer thinks that I am staring at all the other things which my computer is doing. With all the books I am churning out lately, it is more or less a full-time job in itself!

    Simon.

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  17. 'Well you spent 28 minutes viewing 11 pages from 12.45 ...'

    How cool is that; a follower who is fanatically interested in me to the extent of trying to log my time on this blog? This must be success of some sort...

    Simon.

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  18. "I have a window open for Google and various others, including two blogs. This means that all the time that I am actually typing, the computer thinks that I am staring at all the other things which my computer is doing."

    Wow. So this window, it roams around your blog following links all by itself with no input from you? Amazing. You manage to write articles, read the comments and respond to several, all in 10-20 minutes a day? You really should write a book. If you could teach people to write software (so your browser follows links on it's own), speed read, speed type and multi-task as well as you do, the nations productivity would sky-rocket.

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  19. "Perhaps if this blog were a full-time job, I might be able to do justice to some of the more complicated ideas I discuss. As I only spend ten or twenty minutes a day on it, there is not really time to do so."

    Maybe you should consider quality above quantity then? Is it really necessary to blog every day and sometimes more than once.

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  20. 'Wow. So this window, it roams around your blog following links all by itself with no input from you? Amazing'

    I am hugely flattered that you should find the minutiae of my life of such interest! I am currently on this blog. If I then switch to the word precessor and carry on typing, then my computer will not know. It will assume that I am still here on the blog. On the site meter, I might see that a person in Dartford has been on here for the last three hours. I do not then assume that for the last three hours she has really been reading this blog. Rather, she has come on here, done something else and just kept the computer running. I suspect that you are of the generation which does not really understand how these things work and I am, as I said, very busy at the moment, otherwise I would run training session for you.
    Simon.

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  21. 'Maybe you should consider quality above quantity then? Is it really necessary to blog every day and sometimes more than once. '

    One might equally well ask whether it is strictly necessary for you read the thing every day? Why not just come on every couple of days to catch up. Or are you another of those fans of mine who are so devoted to me and my affairs that you cannot bear to tear yourself away? Please tell me that you are not another of those who have been counting how many minutes I have been logged on to the Internet!

    Simon.

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  22. "One might equally well ask whether it is strictly necessary for you read the thing every day?"

    Why would you think that? I could gain the information that you post more than once a day from the right hand side of the home page, where your monthly posting amounts are listed, 44 posts in June, for instance. A quick scan of the home page article dates tells me you post most days.

    "Please tell me that you are not another of those who have been counting how many minutes I have been logged on to the Internet!"

    I wouldn't begin to know how.

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  23. Simon said" "These posts are very short and intended for a lay audience. I am perfectly aware that the situation with genetics is not straightforward; I was making a point about the ability to choose not to follow a course which one's inheritance angles one towards. "

    Unfortunately, that isn't what came across in yesterday's post. What came across was that ‘childhood disorders such as ADHD and so on’ ‘are not random bolts from the blue’ but ‘are all too often associated with common factors in early childhood’.

    Surely it's possible, in 500 words, to provide an accurate, if superficial overview of current knowledge about the relationship between nature and nurture for a lay audience, but for some reason you chose not to do so...

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  24. 'I could gain the information that you post more than once a day from the right hand side of the home page, where your monthly posting amounts are listed, 44 posts in June, for instance. A quick scan of the home page article dates tells me you post most days.'

    Why would you even do that? A foolish question really; for the same reason that either you or another person has been counting up the minutes that I spend here...

    It would be somewhat churlish I suppose to shout at people like this 'Get a life, you sad loser!', which is why I am resisting the impulse to do so. One cannot help remarking though that if a blog is so irritating, surely the easiest course of action would be to give it a wide berth?

    Simon.

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  25. 'What came across was that ‘childhood disorders such as ADHD and so on’ ‘are not random bolts from the blue’ but ‘are all too often associated with common factors in early childhood’.'

    I take it then that you believe the opposite to be true; that things like ADHD are no more than random bolts from the blue and are not associated with any common factors in early childhood. Have I understood your position?

    Simon.

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  26. "On the site meter, I might see that a person in Dartford has been on here for the last three hours. I do not then assume that for the last three hours she has really been reading this blog. Rather, she has come on here, done something else and just kept the computer running."

    Oh sure, I didn't think that you were reading and responding solidly for 28 and 51 minutes (no one's that slow). But each page view (11 and 20 + those at that tally) must have involved at least the time to find a link on the current page, click it, and presumably at least check for and read any new comments and maybe respond to them. I'd guess that some of those page views are probably just refreshes of the home page to see if the number of comments had changed and this wouldn't take long.

    Presumably the person in Dartford looked at several pages over the three hours? Because that's the only way to increase the length of time logged on site meter - it records the time of the first page view, keeps a tally of the number of pages visited and records the time the last page opens. But after 30 minutes inactivity, site meter considers that the visit has eneded. The time of the first and last page view gives the length of time for the visit. You could spend an hour reading a page but site meter would not log it unless another link is clicked. Reading through a single page for several hours (not on your site, obviously, there are some long pages out there) would be logged as as a visit of 0 seconds, for instance.

    The point is, you're doing what you claim parents do and minimising the time and effort spent on this blog for some reason. The last time you covered this was in, 'Academic success for the home educated child', but you've covered it a few times. You obviously spend longer than 10-20 minutes a day on your blog. If you've only spent 20 minutes on your blog today you would need to type at 90 words per minute. And this is without allowing time to read anything, or look up the various quotes you've given or to give any thought to what you are writing. And also accounts for only about 4 hours of the day so far.

    And yes, before you ask, I do have time on my hands today. And I agree, it's probably a sad waste of that time, LOL.

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  27. "One cannot help remarking though that if a blog is so irritating, surely the easiest course of action would be to give it a wide berth?"

    Not irritating, amusing.

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  28. "I take it then that you believe the opposite to be true; that things like ADHD are no more than random bolts from the blue and are not associated with any common factors in early childhood. Have I understood your position?"

    It doesn't have to be one thing or the other. I thought you'd already agreed with that, so why assume others are equally one dimensional?

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  29. From Simon's post
    Anonymous said...
    'Even then, please, accept that children are not all the same and that academic qualifications are not the only measure of success.'

    Nothing I have written today or yesterday had any bearing at all on academic qualifications.

    I did not say that you had done so. To quote from myself in full (pretentious though it seems)
    "Please, Simon, go back to talking about home education rather than than generalising about a world you only visit the edges of and only in some pretty horrendous sounding cases. Even then, please, accept that children are not all the same and that academic qualifications are not the only measure of success."

    Still, I've got far more fun things to do than carry on here. The Sunday Times might amuse you too and give you some different material to play with. One journalist is already bemoaning the summer holidays which means their house is infested with children (Not sure Rentokill can help...) and another is recommending that you take a tutor on holiday with you to improve your child's grades and basically babysit them.

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  30. Human development is incredibly complex and we really are only scratching the surface in terms of our knowledge about how and why we "turn out" the way we do. Most current researchers in the field are looking at how environment and genetics work together. The "either or" arguments are very outdated.

    Simon, you may want to explore Gottlieb's Epigenetic Model of Gene/Environment Coaction or Bronfenbrenner's Bioecological Model of child development. Both are very interesting and show that human development can't be boiled down to simple pronouncements or platitudes.

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  31. Simon said:

    "I take it then that you believe the opposite to be true; that things like ADHD are no more than random bolts from the blue and are not associated with any common factors in early childhood. Have I understood your position?"

    No, you haven't. As Anonymous pointed out, it doesn't have to be one thing or the other.

    'Things like ADHD' are syndromes - co-occurring signs and symptoms - that can have different causes - different causes in different children. They can be caused by inherited genetic variations, genetic predispositions plus environmental factors, environmental factors alone, or by 'random bolts from the blue' - such as a genetic mutation or brain damage due to stroke or infection.

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  32. Simon indignantly wrote,
    "Why would you even do that? [note how many posts Simon makes per month] A foolish question really;"

    How is it possible to miss seeing it? Don't you tend to read everything on a page (or at least scan everything) as you read a page? I just happened to glance to the right as I scrolled down and did a double take when I saw how prolific you are. It hardly took great detective skills! Strange reaction.

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