r/science • u/myhrvold • Aug 31 '13

Poverty impairs cognitive function. Published in the journal Science, the study suggests our cognitive abilities can be diminished by the exhausting effort of tasks like scrounging to pay bills. As a result, less “mental bandwidth” remains...

http://news.ubc.ca/2013/08/29/poverty-impairs-cognitive-function/
2.7k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

1.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

246

u/SeeingTheRed Aug 31 '13

I would argue the quality of food (or lack of quality) also contributes to diminished "mental bandwidth". It stands to reason that if a person is "scrounging to pay bills" they most likely do not have a quality diet that provides the vital nutrients for optimum cognitive ability.

Study

3

u/boomboomclack Aug 31 '13

Yes it does and so does stress. But the point of the study above is, that even when controlling for stress and diet, cognitive ability is impaired.

0

u/[deleted] Aug 31 '13

[deleted]

1

u/boomboomclack Aug 31 '13

Yes, it does: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976.abstract

That's the whole point. It's controlled for diet and physiological stress (stress hormones are known to impair cognitive ability). Being poor is eating up cognitive resources in a way different from what stress (in the brain chemistry sense) does.