-
Is Google Ruining Your Memory?
Wired: By now, you’ve probably heard about this smart study showing that Google is making you stupid, led by Betsy Sparrow at Columbia. The scientists demonstrated that the availability of the internet is changing the nature of what we remember, making us more likely to recall where the facts are rather than the facts themselves. Patricia Cohen of the Times summarizes the results: Dr. Sparrow and her collaborators, Daniel M. Wegner of Harvard and Jenny Liu of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, staged four different memory experiments. In one, participants typed 40 bits of trivia — for example, “an ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain” — into a computer.
-
Internet Use Affects Memory, Study Finds
The New York Times: The widespread use of search engines and online databases has affected the way people remember information, researchers are reporting. The scientists, led by Betsy Sparrow, an assistant professor of psychology at Columbia, wondered whether people were more likely to remember information that could be easily retrieved from a computer, just as students are more likely to recall facts they believe will be on a test. Dr. Sparrow and her collaborators, Daniel M. Wegner of Harvard and Jenny Liu of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, staged four different memory experiments.
-
Baboon Study Shows Benefits for Nice Guys, Who Finish 2nd
The New York Times: At last, good news for the beta male. From the wild to Wall Street, as everyone knows, the alpha male runs the show, enjoying power over other males and, as a field biologist might put it, the best access to mating opportunities. The beta is No. 2 in the wolf pack or the baboon troop, not such a bad position. But conversationally, the term has become an almost derisive label for the nice guy, the good boy all grown up, the husband women look for after the fling with Russell Crowe. It may now be time to take a step back from alpha worship.
-
Speed limit on babies’ vision
UC Davis News & Information: Babies have far less ability to recognize rapidly changing images than adults, according to research from the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain. The results show that while infants can perceive flicker or movement, they may not be able to identify the individual elements within a moving or changing scene as well as an adult. “Their visual experience of changes around them is definitely different from that of an adult,” said Faraz Farzin, who conducted the work as a graduate student at UC Davis and is now a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University.
-
Goalkeepers ‘dive right on high pressure penos’
Yahoo UK & Ireland: A group of Dutch scientists have studied penalty shoot-outs and have come up with some interesting findings. According to the boffins, goalkeepers tend to instinctively dive to the right in high pressure situations due to "animal instincts", while in more normal situations they dive right or left an equal number of times. The bad news for England is that, despite the scientists at the University of Amsterdam using one of their penalty shoot-out defeats as a case study, they plan to pass over their full findings to the Netherlands national team. Read the whole story: Yahoo UK & Ireland
-
Online search engines may be affecting memory, studies say
Washington Post: Search engines may be changing the way our brains remember information, according to research released Thursday. In a series of experiments, Columbia University psychologist Betsy Sparrow and her colleagues produced evidence that people are more likely to remember things they do not think they can find online and will have a harder time remembering things they think they’ll be able to find online. In addition, people are better at remembering where to look for information on the Internet than they are remembering the information itself, the studies found. Read the whole story: The Washington Post
