That Gum You Like Chewing So Much, It’s Messing With Your Mind
I am sure that I am pretty safe in saying that just about all of us have during our school life had one teacher or another tell us to stop chewing gum in class and it seems that they may have had good reason to tell us that.
A new study out from scientists at Cardiff University in Wales have found that chewing gum can very well impair classic test of short-term memory, like recalling numbers in order or lists of words. For example people were less likely to spot missing items in lists with the example of ‘7’ missing from the list ‘28149365’.
This of course contradicts a previous study that found that chewing gum could actually improve short-term memory with the assumption that the act of chewing gum sent more blood to the brain.
The difference between the two studies – the Cardiff study used unflavored gum and the previous study used minty gum which has lead some researchers to suggest that possibly the ‘flavors’ could make it easier to remember tasks linked to pleasant experiences such as nice flavors.
Personally you make me chew unflavored gum I’m only gong to remember one thing – how much the study sucks.
via io9
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About the Author
Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).
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