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BIBLICAL The "Matthew effect" takes its name from a line spoken by "the Master" in Jesus ' Parable of the talents in the Biblical Gospel Of Matthew : :"For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." (.) SOCIOLOGY In . Examples As Credit is valued in science, specific claims of the Matthew effect are contentious.
::This partly motivates our choice of associating Solomonoff's name with the universal distribution and Kolmogorov's name with algorithmic complexity, and, by extension, with the entire area. (Associating Kolmogorov's name with the complexity may also be an example of the "Matthew Effect" first noted in the Gospel according to Matthew, 25:29-30, "For to every one who has more will be given, and he will have in abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.") Matilda effect The is often neglected. The Matilda effect, named after early Feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage , was postulated by Historian Of Science Margaret Rossiter in 1993. EDUCATION In Education the term Matthew effect has been adopted by Keith Stanovich , a psychologist who has done extensive research on Reading and language disabilities. Stanovich used the term to describe a phenomenon that has been observed in research on how new readers acquire the skills to read: early success in acquiring reading skills usually leads to later successes in reading as the learner grows, while failing to learn to read before the third or fourth year of schooling may be indicative of life-long problems in learning new skills. This is because children who fall behind in reading, read less, increasing the gap between them and their peers. Later, when students need to "read to learn" (where before they were learning to read) their reading difficulty creates difficulty in most other subjects. In this way they fall further and further behind in school, dropping out at a much higher rate than their peers. Because of this they are not able to tap into education as a way to improve their lives, essentially becoming poorer while others become richer. In the words of Keith Stanovich: ''Slow reading acquisition has cognitive, behavioral, and motivational consequences that slow the development of other cognitive skills and inhibit performance on many academic tasks. In short, as reading develops, other cognitive processes linked to it track the level of reading skill. Knowledge bases that are in reciprocal relationships with reading are also inhibited from further development. The longer this developmental sequence is allowed to continue, the more generalized the deficits will become, seeping into more and more areas of cognition and behavior. Or to put it more simply -- and sadly -- in the words of a tearful nine-year-old, already falling frustratingly behind his peers in reading progress, "Reading affects everything you do"'' (Adams, 1990, pp. 59-60)" SOCIAL POLICY In Social Policy the term was introduced by Herman Deleeck . It refers to the phenomenon, widely observed across advanced welfare states, that the middle classes tend to be the main beneficiaries of social benefits and services, even if these are primarily targeted at the poor. The term is also used in a similar way in Adult Education to describe the distribution of adult learning across populations. In this case it refers to the phenomenon whereby adults who have the highest levels of initial education are most likely to engage in structured continuing learning, while those with the lowest levels of initial education are the least likely to engage in structured learning. SEE ALSO REFERENCES
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