A Curious Theory About Children’s Development
So, little Junior is driving you crazy, running from window to window in the mall, badgering strangers in the grocery store, peppering you with questions in the car. Take heart. You may have a rocket scientist on your hands.
According to a new study of links between personality and mental ability, children who are outgoing and adventurous as toddlers have substantially higher IQs by the time they are preteens.
Call them “stimulation seekers” rather than troublemakers and it all makes sense. “Children who go out and explore, engage in conversation, socialize with other kids, create a kind of enriched environment for themselves,” explains USC professor Adrian Raine, co-author of the study, published last week in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
“Curiosity, far from killing the cat, can make for a much brighter bunch of kittens.”
Raine’s team of researchers studied children growing up on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. They observed them at age 3, noting how readily they ventured away from their mothers to explore new toys, how friendly they were to research assistants, how much conversation they initiated, and whether they played with other kids. At 11, they tested those same kids again, using IQ tests, school exams and tests of reading ability, motor skills and attentiveness. The kids who were most active and gregarious at age 3 registered IQs 12 points higher at age 11. The difference held for both boys and girls and did not vary by income, ethnic group or family background.
Do curious kids wind up brighter because they learn more by engaging with the world? Or does the same combination of traits that makes them inquisitive also make them smarter?
That, researchers don’t know. But they do know that getting even the littlest children involved in physical activity actually seems to raise their IQ scores.
“We were brought up to think you have a fixed set of brain cells and they never grow,” Raine said. “Now we know that physical exercise alone leads to the creation of new brain cells. It seems teachers have known naturally what’s good for kids: Get out in the fresh air, get that blood pumping around in your brain.”
But even Raine admits that the concept of “intelligence” is neither static or narrow, and IQ does not predict a child’s future. The research measured traits most linked to success in the lives of adults, “but there’s so much more we want for our kids than for them to all grow up to be doctors or lawyers.”
As the mother of three girls who were shy and sensitive as toddlers, I’m wondering what this really means. Because my daughters weren’t rambunctious at 3, should I write off thoughts of the Ivy League?
Of course not, Raine says. “Just because they’re not racing around, doesn’t mean to say the child is doomed to low intelligence.” But it might mean that parents ought to think about ways to encourage their children to “engage their environment.”
“Children today are really like a protected species, not allowed to go anywhere, to take chances. We’re very cautious about letting them out. In the past, when I was young, we’d hang out after school with our friends, play games in the street, explore the neighborhood. Kids today get home from school and sit in front of the TV. We may have to do a little more to cultivate their intellectual curiosity.”
That doesn’t require expensive classes, organized play dates or interactive computer games. “How many people are taking their kids out to explore these beautiful mountains we have around Los Angeles?” Raine says. “Or taking them on a walk and just talking about what you see?”
Raine is about to see for himself what real life will do to his theories. He just became a new father to twin boys, 3 weeks old, with “radically different personalities.”
“Even in the first couple days, we could see differences in their temperaments,” he said. “One was so alert, attentive, engaging. The other was so peaceable and passive. He doesn’t even cry when he’s hungry, like ‘I don’t really want to bother you.’”
Both boys will be encouraged, he says, “to go out and do things, to explore for themselves, to think creatively. I’m going to try really hard to encourage their independence.”
I wish the good professor well. And I hope he doesn’t forget his own advice the first time there’s a meltdown in the parking lot, with two rambunctious, creative, independent--and very bright, no doubt--little boys, refusing to stay in their car seats long enough for daddy to get them home.
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Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is [email protected].
