Impact of Health On Intelligence - Stress

Stress

Further information: Psychological trauma, Historical trauma, and Neuroplasticity

A recent theory suggests that early childhood stress may affect the developing brain and cause negative effects. Exposure to violence in childhood has been associated with lower school grades and lower IQ in children of all races. A group of largely African American urban first-grade children and their caregivers were evaluated using self-report, interview, and standardized tests, including IQ tests. The study reported that exposure to violence and trauma-related distress in young children were associated with substantial decrements in IQ and reading achievement. Exposure to Violence or Trauma lead to a 7.5-point (SD, 0.5) decrement in IQ and a 9.8-point (SD, 0.66) decrement in reading achievement.

Violence may have a negative impact on IQ, or IQ may be protective against violence. The causal mechanism and direction of causation is unknown. Neighborhood risk has been related to lower school grades for African-American adolescents in another study from 2006. Violence may also be more prevalent in the homes of parents with lower IQ's. These parents could have genetically produced children with lower IQ's.

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Famous quotes containing the word stress:

    “Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.”
    —W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1966)

    “A society which is clamoring for choice, which is filled with many articulate groups, each urging its own brand of salvation, its own variety of economic philosophy, will give each new generation no peace until all have chosen or gone under, unable to bear the conditions of choice. The stress is in our civilization.”
    —Margaret Mead (1901–1978)

    “It is not stressful circumstances, as such, that do harm to children. Rather, it is the quality of their interpersonal relationships and their transactions with the wider social and material environment that lead to behavioral, emotional, and physical health problems. If stress matters, it is in terms of how it influences the relationships that are important to the child.”
    —Felton Earls (20th century)