128 february 2020
Reader’s Digestpreviousspreadand^ this^ page:^neosiam^32896395 (tv),^vladyslav^ starozhylov(bicycle),^yeamake^ (chair),^tanach(shoes)^ (all^ shutterstock)a half hours of TV a day for six years
experienced a greater drop in verbal
memory test scores (an average de-
crease of 8–10 per cent) than those who
watched less (an average decrease of
4–5 per cent). On a related note:
Another study found that watching
violent programming elevates stress
hormones, which impairs memory.4
Doodle
Researchers at the University of
Waterloo, Canada, recruited a
group of younger adults and a group
of older adults, gave them a series of
30 words and asked them to either
draw or write them out. After a short
break, both groups were asked to recall
as many words as they could. In both
age groups, those who drew the words
remembered the most. The effect was
actually greater in the older adults.
According to one of the study’s au-
thors, this happens because while
some parts of the brain involved in
memory retrieval deteriorate with age,
the visual-processing regions usually
don’t. Hence, sketching can help adults
of any age keep their memory sharp.5
Walk backwards
Next time you’re trying to recall
something, don’t just think
back—walk back. In a series of ex-
periments, participants viewed a
video of a staged crime, a word list or
a set of pictures. Then they imagined
walking forwards or backwards,
watched a video that simulated for-
wards or backwards motion or actu-
ally walked forwards or backwards.
Some people also sat still. Backwards
motion—whether real, imagined or
watched—helped people remember
the information better than sitting still
and, in most instances, better than
forwards motion. It may be that
moving backwards in space mentally
helps us move back in time to the
moment we learnt something.No Man Is An Island, But ...
Eighty-four-year-old Elsie Eiler is the sole resident of
Monowi, Nebraska, USA, a rural town that peaked with a
population of 150 in the 1930s. Eiler serves as Monowi’s
mayor, librarian, treasurer and bartender.
She has no plans to leave.
source: mnn.com