Tópico: Crianças que levam palmadas têm menor QI

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Children who are spanked have lower IQs
Physical punishment slows kids' intellectual growth, researcher says

Spanking can get kids to behave in a hurry, but new research suggests it can do more harm than good to their noggins. The study, involving hundreds of U.S. children, showed the more a child was spanked, the lower his or her IQ compared with others. [...]

[...] Intelligence quotients
Straus and his colleague Mallie Paschall of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Maryland studied nationally representative samples of two age groups: 806 children ages 2 to 4, and 704 ages 5 to 9. The researchers tested the kids' IQs initially and then four years later.

Both groups of kids got smarter after four years. But the 2- to 4-year-olds who were spanked scored 5 points lower on the IQ test than those not spanked. For children ages 5 to 9, the spanked ones scored on average 2.8 points lower than their unspanked counterparts.

The results, he said, were statistically significant. And they held even after accounting for parental education, income, cognitive stimulation by parents and other factors that could affect children's mental abilities. [...]

How spanking harms
If spanking does send IQ scores down, Straus and others offer some explanations for what might be going on.

"Contrary to what everyone believes, being hit by parents is a traumatic experience," Straus said. "We know from lots of research that traumatic stresses affect the brain adversely." Also, the trauma could cause kids to have more stressful responses in difficult situations, and so may not perform as well cognitively.

By using hitting rather than words or other means of discipline, parents could be depriving kids of learning opportunities. "With spanking, a parent is delivering a punishment to get the child's attention and to get them to behave in a certain way," said Elizabeth Gershoff, who studies childhood development at the University of Texas, Austin. "It's not fostering children's independent thinking." [...]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33013187/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/

No site original, além do texto completo, tem um vídeo que ainda não vi.

[FxF]

Talvez seja só uma questão genética. Cada vez mais disciplina física é evitada pelos pais e começando pelos mais inteligentes. E por sinal seus filhos herdam sua inteligência...

[Buckaroo Banzai]

Acho que não dá para descartar a possibilidade de influência de castigo físico ou maus-tratos, e simplesmente supor que, o que quer se faça com uma criança em desenvolvimento, vai ter o QI geneticamente predestinado. Medir o quanto isso pode afetar é uma tarefa complicada.