Children's intelligence

Brain development impacted by temperature?
this is from bps:

Countless studies have found that children’s intelligence appears to be related to the time of year they were born in. Some investigators have argued this is because seasonally varying environmental factors like temperature and infections can affect brain development. But now Debbie Lawlor and colleagues have analysed data from 12,150 children born in Aberdeen between 1950 and 1956, and they’ve concluded that the effect of season of birth is almost entirely explained by the age children happen to be when they start school.

Reading ability at age 9 and arithmetic ability at age 11 were both related to season of birth (children born in late Winter or Spring performed better), but this association virtually disappeared once age at starting primary school and age relative to class peers were taken into account. That is, season of birth was only related to later intelligence because it affected the age children started school, with those who started school younger or older than the average tending to score less well on later intelligence tests.

It is not always necessary to make things too advanced. Sometimes there is a simple solution, such as the one found in my earlier post about equality in the quality of students: