The magic of a break. For a short time put your work aside and do something else. At least while struggling with verbal learning tasks, such breaks should be helpful and improve your memory. The “spacing effect” as it is called in memory literature, refers to the fact that spatial learning (with temporal lags between the learning session) results in greater retention accuracy and less forgetting compared to massed learning (no lags). There are many different theories why “spatial learning” works. Maybe it works because that the cues which are present in the different learning session variate (a different environment, a different mood) and improve learning. And/or it is just this cycle between forgetting (in the lags) and recall (during the session) which strength the memory. Whatever it is: does it work for any type of learning? Most experiments focus on verbal learning. For motor learning the studies show variating results. Melody Wiseheart (great name by the way) and colleagues analysed if there is a spacing effect while learning to play the piano. They asked students with varying music education to perform two tasks: One focuses on the “translation” from music sheets to the right finger movement on the piano keyboard, the other on the auditory feedback to reproduce a certain melody with right volume and rhythm. Interestingly, massed learning and spatial learning strategy showed both the same learning performance in both tests. Maybe the time lags (max 15min) were to short. But at least it shows, that the spacing effect may vary with the learning task. “Lack of spacing effects during piano learning”
Wiseheart M, D’Souza AA, Chae J (2017) PLoS ONE 12(8): e0182986.
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In many countries, the usage of mobile phones while driving is forbidden. The prohibition is based on the non-use of one hand which can cause interference with the trained driving movements and not on the distraction due to the phone conversation. Therefore, hands-free phone kits are still allowed. But how much does a hands-free phone conversation distract the driver compared to listening to the radio or talking with a passenger? Collet et al. (2009) compared reaction time and heart rate at different secondary tasks while driving. While listening to the radio didn’t affected the reaction time, the reaction time while hands-free phoning and in-vehicle conversation was 20% longer compared to driving without any distractions. That means, referring to the reaction time, there is no difference between phoning and talking to a passenger. Also the mean heart rate, which gives a clue about the strain of the driver, was the same for talking and phoning. Both secondary tasks seem to stress the driver much more than listening to the radio. So what can we learn from that? If you want to concentrate while driving: shut up. Don’t talk to anybody. Turn on your radio instead. "Physiological and behavioural changes associated to
the management of secondary tasks while driving." C. Collet, et al. Applied ergonomics 40.6 (2009): 1041-1046. The todays paper of the day is about stuttering. When I googled stuttering I found a funny quote: “Stuttering is Ok. Because what I say is worth repeating”. This quote highlights already the most prominent feature of stuttering: the involuntary repetitions of sounds and words which disturb the fluency of speech. Moreover, involuntary prolongations of sounds and involuntary silent pauses in which the person is unable to say anything, are also characteristics of stuttering. Sometimes people stutter in uncomfortable stressful situations, sometimes the stuttering is a persistant disease (also called chronic perseverative stuttering - CPS). The latter is the focus of the paper of Jolanta Góral-Półrola et al. (2015). The neurodevelopmental hypothesis of fluency of speech “suggests that the main symptoms in stuttering disorders are the result of integrated genetic, developmental, neurological, and social factors.” Based on this hypothesis, Góral-Półrola et al. (2015) looked at the gene expression of a 26 years old CPS patient. The focus was on stress related genes. Interestingly, “the expression of almost all tested genes, with the exception of IL1, in patient’s leukocytes were lower than in the control group.” This either means a lower stress load of this patient or insufficient stress response and protection of the cells. Of course, a single patient is not enough for significant study results, but having in mind that the most of us were already in a stressfull situation in which they started stutering, it seems quite logical that chronic stuttering may be connected to an decreased stress tolerance due to low stress gene expression. Just as remark: "Changes in gene expression associated with cell stress in the patient with chronic persevarative stuttering"
Góral-Półrola et al. (2015). The Munchhausen syndrom is (simply speaking) when a person plays to be ill in order to get attention and sympathy. The Munchhausen syndrom by proxy is when e.g. parents manipulate medical history of their child simulate or exaggerates or induces health problems of their child by manipulating probes, lying about the medical history and giving damaging drugs. In 1977, the Munchhausen syndrom by proxy was quite unknown. Roy Meadow describes two cases of this form from child abuse and wonders that these cases “ [have] not been described in the medical literature.” The first case he describes is the little girl Kay. When she was 8 month old, urine infection was supposed the first time. Since then her life was full of antibiotics and “innumerable investigations and anaesthetic, surgical, and radiological procedures in three different [health care] centres.” Her mother which had had urinary-tract infections before, was a really caring and loving mother. However, later it was proven that she manipulated the urine probes of herself and the ones of her daughter. Maybe she did it because “she sometimes felt that her husband was more interested in the child than in her”. However, the brother of Kay was always healthy and no victim of the disordered psych of his mother. Fact is, as soon as the hospital controlled the contact between Kay and her mother, Kay was healthy again. So the story has a happy end. No happy end can be found in the second case of the Munchhausen syndrom by proxy which is described in Roy Meadow’s paper. Charles medical history began when he was 6 weeks old. He had attacks of vomiting and drowsiness. It was soon clear that his sodium concentration were too high but nobody was able to find out why this happened, especially as between the attacks he was normal and healthy. “By the age of 14 month it became clear that [the attacks] only happened at home” and that “the illness must be caused by sodium administration”. While he was in hospital no attacks occurred until the weekend when the mother visited her child. Unfortunately, this detection came too late. “During the period in which the local paediatrician, psychiatrist,and social services department were planning arrangements for the child”, Charles had to go to the hospital again and this time he died after he collapsed because of the extreme high sodium level in his blood. After this story I don’t feel like discussing Munchhausen sydrom and Munchhausen syndrom by proxy in a serious scientific manner. So let’s just sum up: we have to be aware that there is the possibility that the health status of a child is manipulated by its parents, even if the parents are friendly and lovely. That doesn’t mean that parents should not be asked for useful hints and that parents shouldn’t be allowed to visit their child in the hospital. Like Roy Meadow wrote: “We may teach, and I believe should teach, that mothers are always right; but at the same time we must recognise that when mothers are wrong they can be terribly wrong.” R.I.P. Charles "Munchausen syndrome by proxy: the hinterland of child abuse."
Roy Meadow The Lancet 310.8033 (1977): 343-345. Everybody knows this feeling: you are looking for a specific word. It is floating in your mind but you can not grab it. You know what it means, are able to recall synonyms. Sometimes you also have a clue how it sounds like… the initial letter, the syllable length. Although you are not able to immediately find the right word you are looking for you know immediately if a word somebody else suggests is the one you are looking for or if it’s not. This mental state in which you can’t recall a familiar word but words of similar form and meaning is called "tip of the tongue" (TOT) phenomenon. In 1966 Roger Brown and David McNeill published a paper in which they tried to analyze the TOT phenomenon. They read the definition of uncommon English words to fifty-six Harvard and Radcliffe undergraduates and asked them to recall the word fitting to the definition before reading the target word. Sometimes this procedures created TOT states in single subjects were the person was aware of a word (right or wrong) fitting to the definition. In this case they asked the person to write down what he knows about the word: initial letter, number of syllables, words with similar meaning or words with similar sound. EXAMPLE The process of recalling parts and attributes of a word but not the complete word itself is called "generic recall". The study showed that indeed people in the TOT state can recall with significant success the number of syllables and the initial letter in a target word. Words with similar sound were most likely representing the right letters in the right position in the beginning and the end of the word, supporting the known order of attention in word reading: As long as the first and the last letter are in the right position people are most likely able to read the word even if the other letters in the middle of the word are unsorted. Looking at the “sound like” words which the persons listed up in the TOT state showed that there was a correlation between the similarity of the “sound like” words to the target words and the chance to find the target word on its own. Roger Brown and David McNeill explain this fact by describing the word memory as a keysort cards system. Each word we know is described by cards describing various features of the word. The cards are punched for various features of the words they describe. Therefore, even if the card with the target word is missing some letters or is unreadable, we are able to recall some facts about the word which then can help us to fill the gaps in the target card until we find the word. The “tip of the tongue” phenomenon
Roger Brown and David McNeill Journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior 5.4 (1966): 325-337 For decades, the people thought that aggression is based on low self-esteem. The paper of Roy F. Baumeister, Brad J. Bushman, and W. Keith Campbell published in 2000, challenges this low-self-esteem theory. Just image a person with low self esteem: this person is unsure and confused about its own position which makes them emotionally labile and shy. This person is not a person which is risking a confrontation, isn’t it? Now imagine a violent person. Assuming that you will not be motivated to start a conflict on yourself when there is no chance for you to win it, the aggressive person is confident of itself. It has a strong sense of personal superiority. Does this means that the low-self-esteem theory is wrong? It seems likely. Does it means it is high self esteem which makes people aggressive? No. Of course there are also people with high self esteem which are not aggressive at all. So what makes people aggressive? There are studies about instability of self-esteem as well as narcissism as base of aggressive behaviour. However, you can not say that a narcissistic person is an aggressive person. The highly favourable self-view is just a risk factor for aggressive behaviour against persons who challenge this view. Therefore, “threatened egotism, rather than low self-esteem, is the most explosive recipe for violence.” Self-Esteem, Narcissism, and Aggression: Does Violence Result From Low Self-Esteem or From Threatened Egotism?
Roy F. Baumeister, Brad J. Bushman, and W. Keith Campbell Current directions in psychological science 9.1 (2000): 26-29. |
IdeaI love to increase my general science knowledge by reading papers from different fields of science. Here I share some of them. Archiv
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