神经科学与心理学2021medrxiv.org
疫情期间出生的儿童认知表现显著下降
Children born in the pandemic have significantly reduced cognitive performance
入门 · 约 30 分钟读完前置知识：发展心理学基础、统计方法基础
导读
这篇预印本研究疫情期间出生的婴幼儿认知表现是否显著下降，报告称 2020-2021 年出生的儿童在早期认知测评中得分明显低于此前年份的儿童。评论者普遍持谨慎态度，指出论文数据分析不够严谨，需等待同行评审和独立复现。
HN 关注点：疫情对儿童发育的长期影响，同时讨论焦点集中在这类耸动结论的社会科学研究可信度与统计方法是否可靠。
HN 评论精选
这几条评论里：质疑 3 补充 1
质疑对耸动的社科研究结果应默认怀疑，等待数据公开和独立复现
我想每次在 HN 看到这类标题都要说一遍：过去十年的社会科学研究已经证明，听起来耸动的结果在原始数据公开之前都应视为可疑；即使数据过关，也应保持怀疑，直到用全新数据集独立复现为止。
peterbonney查看英文原文
I think I say this every time I see a headline like this on HN, but I'll say it again: The past decade of social science research publication has proven that provocative-sounding results should be considered fraudulent until the underlying data has been published, and then (assuming the data passes muster) should be regarded with skepticism until independently replicated with a fresh data set.
质疑从论文图表看，前几年的趋势本身可能解释结果，分析不够严谨
很想看原始数据，但从他们自己的图可以看出，2017、2018、2019 年本身呈现的趋势就能让 2020 和 2021 的数据与趋势一致。他们既然对比了 2020/2021 与之前年份，本可以做一个逐年对比矩阵。我会等有人分析原始数据并经同行评审后再下结论。我并不否认疫情对儿童发育有影响——没有影响反而奇怪——但没想到这篇论文的数据分析如此不严谨。
fabbari查看英文原文
Would love to see the raw data, but from their own plots you can see that 2017, 2018 and 2019 show a trend that would make the 2020 and 2021 data consistent with the trend. As they show data comparing 2020 and 2021 to the previous years, they could have shown a matrix to compare year over year across the data. I will wait for someone to look at the raw data and peer review the paper before jumping to conclusions. I'm not discounting that the COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on child development, I would be surprised if it didn't, but I expected a bit more rigorous data analysis from this paper.
质疑质疑测评内容：可能测的是对刺激的反应，受防疫措施影响的是测试本身而非认知发育
希望 Methods 部分能多介绍测评本身。这些孩子最多两岁，不可能做数学题。据我有限的了解，这个年龄段的认知测评主要考察对刺激的反应。如果测的是某些非常特定的项目，而受常见防疫措施影响的是测试方式而非孩子整体的认知发育呢？
smeej查看英文原文
I wish the "Methods" section got a bit more info the assessments themselves. These kids are a maximum of two years old. It's not like they're sitting down with math worksheets. From my (limited) understanding, most cognitive assessments in children that age have to do with responsiveness to stimuli. It would help to know what they're testing specifically, and if it could be something extremely specific to the test that's being impacted by common covid practices, rather than the child's cognitive development as a whole.
补充引用 1918 年流感长期影响的历史研究佐证，并结合自己孩子的经历讨论社交影响
1918 年流感疫情的影响同样巨大且持续了数十年。胎儿期暴露似乎是主要因素：在疫情中处于孕期的男女，教育程度出现大幅不连续下降；感染母亲的孩子高中毕业概率最多低 15%，男性工资低 5-9%，贫困概率最多上升 15%。我女儿 2020 年 1 月底出生，应该躲过了胎儿期暴露，但社交方面的影响可能不小——虽然她这个年龄的同伴不戴口罩，部分托育人员用透明挡板代替口罩，但她的社交机会还是比几年前少了。
cossatot查看英文原文
The effects of the 1918 influenza epidemic were large and persisted for decades, as well. Marginal Revolution has a good summary[1]. Fetal exposure seems to have been a major factor[2], money quote here: Fetal health is found to affect nearly every socioeconomic outcome recorded in the 1960, 1970, and 1980 Censuses. Men and women show large and discontinuous reductions in educational attainment if they had been in utero during the pandemic. The children of infected mothers were up to 15 percent less likely to graduate from high school. Wages of men were 5–9 percent lower because of infection. Socioeconomic status…was substantially reduced, and the likelihood of being poor rose as much as 15 percent compared with other cohorts. Public entitlement spending was also increased. My own daughter was born in late Jan 2020 so I think we dodged the fetal exposure issue but perhaps socialization impacts may be substantial (although at her age, her peers do not wear masks and some daycare providers have worn clear spit shields rather than masks; nonetheless I think she has socialized less than she would have a few years previously, but more than kids who don't go to daycare). [1]: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/03/the-lasting-effects-of-the-1918-influenza-pandemic.html [2]: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/507154
历次讨论
- 2021Hacker News 讨论帖13 分 · 2 评
- 2021Hacker News 讨论帖269 分 · 313 评
同领域还值得读
神经科学家能理解微处理器吗？（2017）
Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor? (2017)
提出一个思想实验：把神经科学常用的分析方法（损伤实验、电生理、功能定位等）应用到一个我们完全了解其原理的工程系统——6502 微处理器（运行游戏）上，检验这些方法能否真正“理解”…
神经科学与心理学2017 · 411 分 · 135 评进阶 · 约 60 分钟编辑精选大脑衰老呈现非线性转变，提示中年“关键窗口”
Brain aging shows nonlinear transitions, suggesting a midlife "critical window"
这篇 PNAS 论文研究大脑衰老的非线性变化，发现大脑老化并非匀速进行，而是在中年（约 40-60 岁）存在一个关键的"临界窗口期"，此时干预可能有效。
神经科学与心理学2025 · 295 分 · 159 评进阶 · 约 75 分钟编辑精选社交网络中大规模情绪传染的证据（2014）
Evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks (2014)
这篇 2014 年发表于 PNAS 的论文研究了 Facebook 上约 70 万用户的信息流中，减少正面或负面内容是否会传染性地影响用户自己发布内容的情绪。
神经科学与心理学2020 · 285 分 · 72 评入门 · 约 45 分钟编辑精选裸盖菇素使人类大脑去同步化
Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain
这篇 Nature 研究用个体化的 fMRI 精密成像追踪受试者服用裸盖菇素（psilocybin）前后的脑功能连接变化，发现药物会造成大范围的脑网络「去同步化」，尤其是默认模式…
神经科学与心理学2024 · 273 分 · 259 评进阶 · 约 60 分钟编辑精选对智力的赞扬会削弱儿童的动机与表现（1998）
Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children's Motivation (1998)
这篇 1998 年的经典论文（Dweck 等人）通过实验研究表扬方式对儿童动机的影响：夸孩子“聪明”（表扬智力）会让他们回避挑战、害怕失败，而表扬努力则更能培养坚持性。
神经科学与心理学2016 · 253 分 · 155 评入门 · 约 45 分钟编辑精选